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THE GREAT ENGLISH 
LETTER-WRITERS 



By W. J. and C. W. Dawson 

The Reader's Library. To be issued 
in 14 volumes. Each, 16mo, cloth, 
nef$lM, 

Designed to meet the rapidly growing taste 
for the finest products of literature, which have 
already attained classical value and importance. 
The object is thus to present in a concise form 
a series of volumes, dealing with the growth 
and development of the various modes of 
literary expression. 

The notes will be of a biographical, historical, 
and chronological character; each volume will 
be prefaced by a critical essay. 

Dr. W. J. Dawson is already widely known 
by his books on literature, particularly — THE 
MAKERS OF MODERN ENGLISH. His 
reputation as a critic and master of style is 
firmly established. Mr. Coningsby W. Dawson 
is a graduate of Oxford University, and a high 
honor man of the Oxford School of History. 

Now Ready. 

Vol. I & 1 1 The Great English Letter Writers. 

To Follow. 

" III The Great Essayists. 

" IV & V The Great Historians. 

" VI The Great Biographies. 

" VII The Great Lyric Poems. 

" VIII The Great Short Stories, 

" IX & X The Great Novels. 

« XI The Great Confessions. 

" XII The Great Nature Lovers. 

" XIII The Great Devotional Writers. 

" XIV The Great Accusers. 

This list will be subject to additions and 
revision, and the order of publication may be 
varied. 



THE READER'S LIBRARY 

The GREAr EHGLISH 
LETTER WRITERS 

With Introductory 
Essays and Motes 

Byi 

WILLIAM J. BJiWSOJi 

and 

CONINGSBY W. DAWSOJ^ 

Second Series 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



^^N 



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Copyright, 1908, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



LlaHARYotCONGHtSS 





New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 80 Wabash Avenue 
Toronto : 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London : 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 



PREFACE 

The purpose of The Reader's Library is to present in 
succinct forn;i a survey of English literature. The 
method adopted is to assemble under generic titles the 
best specimens of the various branches of literature, in 
such a way that each volume shall be of equal service to 
the scholar and the general reader. 

The first two volumes of the series, The Great Eng- 
lish Letter- Writers, are now presented to the public. The 
selections have been carefully arranged, with a view not 
to chronological order so much as to the illustration of 
the growth of the art of letter-writing. The object of 
the editors has been to present what may be called a 
pageant-view of their theme: to show how various men 
and women, scattered through different ages, have borne 
themselves under the same crises of emotion or action. 
That which is obviously lost in abandoning a strictly 
chronological arrangement is recaptured in the introduc- 
tory essays to each volume, which aim at a general historic 
survey of the art of letter-writing, together with a critical 
estimate of the writers, and of their relationship to the 
literature of their age. Biographical details concerning 
these writers are contained in the body of the volume. 

Where a subject cannot be adequately treated in one 
volume, as is the case with The Great Letter- Writers, each 
volume contains a separate essay, so that it may be, as 
far as is possible, complete in itself. 

3 



4 PREFACE 

The reader is referred to the general prospectus of the 
series for the plan of the entire work. Among the volumes 
now near completion are The Great English Essayists, 
The Great English Historians, and The Great English 
Nature-Lovers. The method adopted in the present 
volumes will be pursued in all succeeding volumes. 

It will be noticed, no doubt, that some letter-writers 
of great eminence are not as adequately represented as 
could be wished. The reason for this inadequate repre- 
sentation is found in the difficulties which are involved 
in copyright matter. The gratitude of the editors is due, 
and is hereby expressed, to many publishers and authors, 
who have generously granted a very liberal use of copy- 
right material. In some instances, however, the use of 
such material has been strictly limited. 

Every care has been taken to discover the holders of 
copyright, and to print nothing without express permis- 
sion. In some cases, however, the editors have been unable 
to trace the owner. Should any letter be found in these 
volumes for which permission should have been gained, 
the editors beg to state that the error is not wilful, and 
they offer their apologies to the undiscovered owners of 
the copyright. 

To the following publishers and authors, who have ex- 
tended their courtesy to the Editors, by allowing the use 
of copyright material contained in these two volumes, a 
word of grateful acknowledgment is due: — To Messrs. 
G. P. Putnam's Sons for Mr. and Mrs. Sorrow's letter, 
from Professor Knapp's Life of Borrow, copyright 1899 ; 
to Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company for the correspond- 
ence of Charlotte Bronte, from Mr. Clement K. Shorter's 
The Brontes and Their Circle, copyright 1896; to Messrs. 
Houghton, Mifflin & Company for the letters of Eliza- 
beth and Kobert Browning, from Mrs. Sutherland Orr's 



PREFACE 5 

Life and Letters of Bdhert Browning; to the John Lane 
Company for the two letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle, from 
New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsli Carlyle, edited 
by Mr. Alexander Carlyle, copyright 1903; to Messrs. 
Charles Scribner's Sons for the letters of Jane Welsh and 
Thomas Carlyle, from Thomas Carlyle: A History of His 
Life in London, 1834-1881, by J. A. Fronde, and from Let- 
ters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle; to the John Lane 
Company for Carlyle's letter to Mrs. Aitken, March 11th, 
1869 ; to Mr. Charles Eliot Norton for Carlyle's letter to 
Dr. Carlyle, June, 1834, from Letters of Thomas Carlyle, 
1826-1836, copyright 1888; to Messrs. Charles Scribner's 
Sons for letters from Thomas Carlyle: A History of the 
First Forty Years of His Life, 1795-1835, by J. A. Fronde; 
to Messrs. D. Appleton & Company for letters of Charles 
Dickens, from The Life of Charles Lichens, by John 
Forster; to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for letters of 
Charles Dickens, from The Letters of Charles Lichens, 
edited by his sister-in-law and his eldest daughter, also for 
those from A Collection of Letters of Charles Lichens; to 
Messrs. Harper & Brothers for those from Letters of Charles 
Lichens to Wilhie Collins, edited by Laurence Hutton, 
copyright 1891 ; to Messrs. Harper & Brothers for George 
Eliot's letter, from George Eliot's Life as Belated in Her 
Letters and Journal; to Messrs. Thomas Crowell & Company 
for selections from Mr. Buxton Forman's Letters of John 
Keats; to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for selections 
from Letters of Sidney Lanier, copyright 1899; to the 
Century Company for the letters of Abraham Lincoln, 
from The Complete Worhs of Abraham Lincoln, edited by 
John G. Nicolay and John Hay, copyright 1890; to Messrs. 
Harper & Brothers for the letters of Lord Macaulay, from 
Macaulay's Life and Letters, edited by the Eight. Hon. 
Sir George Otto Trevelyan, copyright 1875; to Messrs. 



6 PREFACE 

Charles Scribner's Sons for selections from Letters of 
Bobert Louis Stevenson, edited by Mr. Sidney Colvin, 
copyright 1899; to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for the 
correspondence of Thackeray, from A Collection of Letters 
of TJiackeray, 1847-1855, copyright 1887. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 



The Art and Attainment of English 

Letter-Writing 
By-Gone Lovers 
Landscapes 
Love of Cities 
Criticising the Critics 
The Artist and His Art 
Literary Verdicts 
Miscellaneous Verdicts 
Ehymed Epistles . . 
Familiar Letters . 
Oddities .... 



9 
25 
87 
109 
125 
137 
169 
211 
221 
247 
283 



The Art and Attainment of English 
Letter-Writing 

OF the many forms of literature, letter-writing is 
probably the oldest, as it is certainly the most in- 
timate and sincere. This alone should ensure for 
it respect, yet upon the whole that respect has not been 
accorded, probably because some suspicion lingers in the 
minds even of acute critics that it is at best but an inferior 
and subsidiary form of literature. 

Very little consideration is needed, however, to dispel 
this suspicion. To write a really good letter requires a 
combination of qualities at once rare in themselves and 
rarer still in their conjunction. Thus the writer must him- 
self be interesting, and have interesting matter to com- 
municate ; he must be something of an egoist, to whom his 
own sensations are noticeable, and worthy of notice; he 
must possess both daring and freedom, for the last place 
where caution and reticence are required is in the familiar 
epistle; he must be resolutely sincere, for the moment he 
begins to pose his magic wand is broken, and he becomes 
tedious and offensive; he must above all possess the inti- 
mate note, for without it he will produce an essay, but not- 
a letter. Of all these qualities perhaps the last is the 
rarest, for a good letter is really a page from the secret^ 
memoirs of a man. It may be a memoir of ideas or of! 
events ; it does not greatly matter which, so long as it con-' 
tributes to our knowledge of the man. For this is the first 
aim of a true letter, self -revelation. In many forms of lit- 

9 



10 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

erature self-revelation is the last thing that is to be ex- 
pected ; in most it would be a disturbing and offensive ele- 
ment. We do not need it in the historian ; we need it only 
partially in the essayist; even in poetry, especially of the 
epic kind, it is not always wanted ; but in a letter we want 
this, and nothing less than this. The man who is not pre- 
pared to unlock his heart to us can never write a great letter. 
It is recorded of various artists and writers that they 
imagined they worked better if they approached their task 
in the dignity of full dress; slovenly attire seemed incom- 
patible with dignified expression. There are certain books 
which undoubtedly suggest the element of elaborate deco- 
jrum, but letters suggest something of the very opposite. 
'In them the author appears in undress. He may be pic- 
tured lounging at a tavern table, sitting in a green arbour, 
rounding off the day beside a study fire, his studious and 
public self forgotten, the pose demanded by his public laid 
aside, the natural man alone apparent, and speaking in the 
accent of fearless and unrestrained vivacity. He who writes 
for the public must needs keep the public in his eye ; spec- 
tral reviewers throng around his table, critics watch for his 
misdemeanours, and he writes amid the rustle of a thousand 
journals and reviews. But the loud potentialities of pub- 
licity do not disturb the genuine letter-writer. He writes 
to gratify himself and please a friend; he has no more 
notorious object in view. Were he the most famous of 
authors, for the time he must become a mere private per- 
son; and unless he be capable of this spirit of detachment 
and divestiture, he will never write a genuine letter. This 
is why George Eliot's letters are dull and Matthew Arnold's 
letters stiff; they cannot forget that they are public per- 
sonages. This is also why men so radically separate as Wal- 
pole and FitzGerald write with such an easy charm; they 
either despise or forget the existence of the public, and are 



ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING 11 

intent upon nothing loftier than pleasant gossip about 
themselves, their opinions and their prejudices, their tastes 
and their employments. The world loves good gossip, 
which is after all the staple of all good conversation; and 
the letter-writer is a conversationalist who does not object 
to being overheard. 

If we bear these distinctions in mind, we shall be able 
to distinguish what really constitutes a good letter. In the 
preparation of this volume many hundreds of books have 
been sedulously winnowed for material, often with surpris- 
ingly poor results, even in the case of the greatest authors. 
Thus, for example, the biography of Charles Kingsley is a 
charming book, and since it consists in the main of extracts 
from his voluminous correspondence, one would have 
imagined that it was the easiest thing in the world to 
gather from it a large sheaf of interesting letters. Noth- 
ing of the kind has happened for the simple reason that in 
his most private hours Kingsley is never quite able to for- 
get his relations with the public. He writes much, he 
writes well, and it argues an immense fund of good nature 
that he should have poured out his powers so fully in cor- 
respondence with his friends; but because he is always 
conscious of his mission he prioduces not letters so much 
as elaborate treatises and essays. Mrs. Carlyle, on the 
contrary, can make us more interested in her finger's ache 
than Kingsley in his most brilliant discussions of socialism 
and theology. It is the personal note we miss in Kingsley ; 
it is nothing but the personal note that we have in Mrs. 
Carlyle. And as it was with Kingsley, so it has been with 
many greater men; they have had just enough egoism to 
make them conscious of the public, but not enough to make 
them forget it. Even Euskin rarely attains this art. He, 
like Kingsley, was a correspondent of tireless industry, but 
more often than not his letters are moral or aesthetic dis- 



12 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

sertations with a name and an adieu tacked on. The very 
first paragraph;, with its exquisite balance and antithesis, 
undeceives us as to the true nature of all that follows. We 
know that the friend to whom these brilliant paragraphs 
are addressed is after all a wooden horse in whose belly a 
printing-press lies concealed. 

Among the earliest letter-writers of English literature 
the distinction between the essay and the letter was not 
very carefully preserved. Addison's essays, for example, 
are in reality extended letters ; and it may be argued that 
the modern essay, which began with Addison, owes its 
origin to the epistolary art. The essay, nevertheless, soon 
took its own form, and became homiletic. It had a definite 
theme, and was a dissertation upon that theme. So 
popular was this form of literature that for a long time the 
value of the letter was overlooked, and its peculiar 
characteristics were forgotten. Alexander Pope did much 
to re-establish the letter in popular esteem by the publica- 
tion of a series of epistles which at once took the taste of 
the town. Among his contemporaries was Lady Mary 
Montagu, who recognised in the letter a form of literary 
expression which precisely suited her rapid and wayward 
pen. No travel-letters have ever been more brilliant and 
vivacious than hers. To the same period belongs Horace 
Walpole. Walpole was a man curiously before his age in 
many things. He was the first exponent of the new ro- 
mantic impulse which later on produced Scott and the 
Waverley Novels, the revival of Gothic architecture and 
Gilbert Scott, the Oxford Movement and Newman, the 
Esthetic movement and Euskin. Horace Walpole despised 
literature as a profession, and being himself in receipt of a 
handsome income from the public treasury had no occasion 
to practise it. Yet he was conscious of the ^^ irritation of 
the idea '^ — as Flaubert puts it, which is the source of all 



ENGLISH LETTER- WRITING 13 

literary expression. To a man so constituted and cir- 
cumstanced the familiar letter afforded just that mode of 
literary expression which was best suited to his genius. He 
was by temperament and habit a keen critic of life. He 
was indefatigably curious. He would rise at midnight to 
look upon a fire. He would hasten to Temple Bar and gaze 
through a telescope at the blood-stained heads of the rebel 
lords, as eager for a new sensation as the most vulgar of the 
crowd. He had the quickest and the keenest eye for 
foibles and defects in others. He was the master of a pen 
at once lucid and caustic. How could such a pen be better 
used than in the semi-confidential epistle? He was too 
indolent to write history and too indifferent to reward to 
attempt the serious essay. But in the letter he found the 
exact medium that suited him. Here he could say what he 
would, he could record his impressions with vividness, he 
could be as brilliantly malicious as he chose^ without fear 
of contradiction. Things which no sober historian, con- 
scious of the judgment of posterity, would have dared to 
write, he writes. He comments on the gaudy slovenliness 
of the Lady Mary Montagu, her eccentric dress, her pasty 
complexion, and her oily hair. He pictures Wesley as a 
lean-faced man, as palpably an actor as Garrick. He never 
mentions Lord North except to make him appear ridicu- 
lous. His one serious pursuit in life was to build, extend, 
alter, and adorn his mock-Gothic castle at Strawberry Hill ; 
and yet is it so little serious that he often mocks his own 
endeavours with caustic raillery. Yet, with all these de- 1 
fects, and perhaps because of them, he made himself the ' 
most brilliant letter-writer of his time. He did more than 
this, for he vindicated the place of the letter in literature, 
by making it a mirror held up to his time, in which we see, 
as in a magic crystal, all the plots, intrigues, and follies of 
the great, with occasional prophetic glimpses of those un- 



14 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

derlying forces which were working out a new and nobler 
age. 

There is, however, one defect about the letters of both 
Lady Montagu and Horace Walpole; they obviously as- 
sume publication. In the case of Lady Montagu, no 
doubt on this head is possible. She goes so far as to in- 
struct her correspondents to preserve her letters. The result 
is that that element of spontaneity, which is the most charm- 
ing feature of the genuine letter, is sometimes wanting. 
When the writer of a letter becomes conscious of the liter- 
ary worth of his production, the perfume of intimacy is lost. 

We turn therefore to another kind of letter, which is the 
genuine unpremeditated outpouring of confidential friend- 
ship. Letters of this description may be found in the biog- 
raphies of most distinguished persons. It is characteristic 
of the small practitioner in letters that he is Jealously par- 
simonious concerning his ideas, because he has few to spare. 
He will not give away the merest sweepings of his workshop 
for fear that some stray grain of gold may be discovered in 
them. But the great writer has so large a treasure that he 
never thinks of economy. Nothing is more surprising 
than to discover what a wealth of ideas is scattered in the 
correspondence of men of genius. Keats will enclose verses 
that have since become immortal in letters which he writes 
to persons whose chief significance is that he loved them. 
His letters contain rough drafts of all the philosophic 
ideas on which his life and art were built ; and as the first 
rapid sketch of a great artist has often more fire and viriHty 
than the elaborated picture, so these rough drafts of Keats 
have the brilliant effervescence of a genius in its first 
miraculous freshness and prodigal activity. Dickens — to 
take a type of mind absolutely different — is equally lavish. 
His letters are full of pictures of life, finished with as i 
careful an art as the greatest passages of his writings, and 



ENGLISH LETTER- WRITING 15 

overflowing with a humour which is often much more 
natural and vivacious. And, to take a yet more modern 
instance, the same thing is true of Stevenson; so true, in- 
deed, that there is serious ground for the conclusion that 
his letters will be treasured and remembered when all his 
stories, and all but a select dozen of his essays are for- 
gotten. Were any vindication needed of the high im- 
portance of the letter as a form of literature, such a state- 
ment as this, if it be accepted, should carry decisive convic- 
tion with it. 

But quite apart from the degree of literary art which 
may or may not be found in a letter, there is the value 
which attaches to it as a revelation of personality. Many 
forms of literature, as we have seen, do not demand this 
element. We may go further, and say that they are hostile 
to it. The man who is definitely v/riting for the public is 
always conscious of the restraint put upon his personality 
by the conditions of his task. He is writing for a dim 
host of people whose multiplied idiosyncrasies he does not 
understand, with whose view of life he has but partial 
acquaintance and sympathy, whose tastes and opinions he 
may have reason to fear, to placate, or to make allowance 
for. Every writer is aware of a multitude of cross-cur- 
rents that deflect his aim when he addresses an unknown 
public. It often seems as though some wayward sprite sits 
upon his pen, and forces him to write something that is not 
at all in accordance with his real thought. The most 
humiliating pain of authorship is this disparity between 
intention and achievement. It would almost seem as if, 
with the best intentions to use words to express thought, 
they have after all been used only to conceal it; and the 
sensitive writer, when he comes to read his own printed 
page, is dismally aware that it is quite perversely unlike the 
thought and sentiment which first wejled up in his mind 



16 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

and drove him to literary expression. What he does not 
see is that this deflection of aim, this loss of the essential 
spirit of utterance, is in the main due to the disturbing 
sense that he is addressing a multitude of unseen and un- 
known auditors. 

But when he addresses a single auditor, who is known, 
loved, and trusted, this embarrassment at once disappears. 
He can not only afford to be confidential and spontaneous, 
but in the nature of the thing he must be nothing less 
than this. The result is not only the free revelation of 
personality, but often a corresponding release of literary 
power. This is a characteristic very obvious and marked 
in Stevenson. From the mere literary point of view his 
letters are in many instances superior to anything that may 
be found in his tales and essays. His phrases have a sharp- 
edged natural brilliance ; they come fresh and hot from the 
mint of his imagination; they are free from the artifice 
which characterises similar phrases in the essays, and are 
by so much the more convincing and impressive. ISTo man 
ever used various forms of literary expression with such a 
consistent aim to express himself. No modern writer has 
succeeded so well. Yet when we read his tales and essays 
we are able to see very clearly how partial the success was 
even at the best; but while in his deliberate writings the 
suspicion of artifice is never wholly conquered, in the let- 
ters there is the essential artist, instinctive, natural, trium- 
phantly flexible and at ease. 

I And this leads to a reflection that goes deeper still, viz., 
'that in no way is a man so likely to be truly known as in 
his familiar letters. A single letter may often express the 
nature and spirit of a great man much more effectually 
than the best biography. We have an admirable instance 
of this in the brief but exquisite letter addressed by Abra- 
ham Lincoln to Mrs. Bixby of Boston, who had lost five 



ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING 17 

sons in the Civil War. '^ I pray/' he writes, " that our 
Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereave- 
ment, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved 
and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have 
laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom/' No 
one needs to be told how great and noble was the soul from 
which that sentence came; by some incommunicable 
subtlety of feeling we realise the man, in all his own slow 
martyrdom, his patience, resoluteness, courage, and infinite 
tenderness of heart, in all the rarity and holiness of his own 
spirit; and we do this much more perfectly than by the 
reading of a hundred state documents and speeches, 
although in each one of these there may be discovered some 
impress of his personality. 

A letter such as this, hastily written no doubt under the 
immense pressure and anxiety of public affairs^ does much 
to reassure us that the epistolary art is not the fugitive and 
superseded art which many critics would have us suppose. 
There is no doubt some truth in the contention that the 
age of letter-writing is over ; but such a verdict needs much 
qualification. What is meant probably is that the condi- 
tions of modern life are such that there is neither the time 
nor the occasion for the elaborate letter. Where men lived 
far apart, and the means of communication were expensive, 
they naturally did not write to one another unless they had 
something to communicate that seemed worth while. And 
because they had leisure they were able to write fully and at 
length. These conditions are not likely to return. No 
man would waste his time to-day in writing to a friend a 
detailed account of public events which he might be quite 
sure had already reached his correspondent in the morning 
paper. The busy man will write as little as he can on any 
subject; he will use the telephone and typewriter; and 
never yet was there a letter of any value dictated to an 



18 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

obedient machine. But this after all is only one phase of 
life. There are still sequestered and serene existences 
whose chief traffic is in ideas, affections, and emotions. 
"Women especially are, as a rule, excellent letter-writers, 
because they live in their emotions. I will hazard the 
statement, that were I to publish a selection from the let- 
ters I have received during the last twenty years from 
persons whose names are totally unknown to the general 
public, I could produce a volume not much inferior in 
interest and art to the present volume. The reason for 
this excellence lies in the fact that the letter is and must 
remain the best possible vehicle for the transmission of 
emotion. Given a moderate command of language, a quick 
eye, a thoughtful mind, and a warm heart, and any person 
of intelligence can produce an excellent letter. For the 
chief thing after all which is necessary is not elaborate 
leisure, but character ; not the training of the skilled writer 
but the pressure of a real thought; not leisure, but the 
power of a deep emotion such as Lincoln felt when he wrote 
to Mrs. Bixby. As long as men love, the art of letter- 
writing will remain. 

With matters such as these we are not however greatly 
concerned. Our present concern is with those specimens 
of published epistles which justify letter-writing as a fine 
art. It is always a somewhat perilous thing to attempt 
rigid categories and characterisations, yet the following 
distinctions may prove useful. 

Keats may be taken as the best representative of what 
may be called inspired letter-writing. He is in his letters, 
as in his poems, " of imagination all compact.^^ He has 
little or no relation with the world in its sordid and ha- 
bitual aspects. He is detached from it and above it, and he 
fills us with the sense of freedom and release. He never 
stirs far from his Dream-garden, which lies midway between 



ENGLISH LETTER- WRITING 19 

waking and sleeping, where such things as Time, and 
Space, and Change have lost their exactitudes ; where man 
may out-distance his destiny, and live the life of the spirit, 
unconscious of the flesh. The real greatness of Keats is but 
partially revealed in his poetry. To understand the height 
and measure of his nature a study of his letters is compul- 
sory ; there only do we comprehend the grounds for the ver- 
dict of Tennyson that " Keats was the greatest of us all." 

Very different from Keats is Carlyle, whose letters really 
belong to the confessional realm of literature. He knows 
the world in all its sordidness, and he accuses it. But he 
knows himself with even more piercing vision, and he ac- 
cuses himself the more bitterly. For him the world is no 
Dream-garden; it is a battlefield where the fight is almost 
lost, the day far spent, and he himself impotent either to 
turn the tide of battle or, like Joshua, to stay the sinking 
sun. He is a man in pain, and pain makes him prophetic. 
Yet there are moments of calm wisdom, when he sees to 
the centre of things; more exquisite moments still when 
his whole heart is softened and overflowed by tenderness. 
It would be temerarious to say of Carlyle, as of Stevenson, 
that he may be best remembered by his letters, for his 
range of literary achievement is much vaster and more 
memorable. But his letters, nevertheless, are his true 
memoir; they exhibit his art at its finest, and have a 
delicacy and beauty of style often lacking in his larger 
efforts. To the mendacity of biographers who did not un- 
derstand him, and the malice of a world of little men, 
curious to unveil his weaknesses, his spirit, if it still beholds 
the stage of Time, can afford to be indifferent : for he has 
left his true memorial in his epistles, and in these alone is 
the real man enshrined. 

Charles Lamb has a place apart in the history of letter- 
writing. For forty 3"ears he was a tireless correspondent, 



20 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

his first published letter being addressed to Coleridge in 
1796, and his last to Mrs. Dyer in 1834. In the four 
hundred and seventeen letters of Lamb which are included 
by Canon Ainger in his two volumes, we have every species 
of epistle; the grave and the gay, the pathetic and the 
absurd; letters that are the merest whimsies, letters that 
contain treasures of admirable thought and criticism, let- 
ters that touch upon the deepest and the saddest things of 
life. In all there is the same inimitable charm which we 
find in the Essays of Elia. If any fault can be found with 
these letters it is that they are too like the essays, and often 
are indeed the first drafts of the essays. The Dissertation 
on Roast Pig appears first in a letter to Coleridge, and his 
account of Dyer was the matter of a letter before it was 
worked up into an essay. It is because the letter so often 
approximates to the essay that Lamb frequently fails in 
the highest attributes of the letter-writer. We have wit, 
fancy, imagination, but they are too conscious of them- 
selves; it is only in the really private letter, written in 
some hour of acute distress, that Lamb reveals himself 
with entire sincerity. Perhaps the best description of his 
letters, as a whole, would be Literary letters. 

Edward PitzGerald and Stevenson represent the letter 
as a means of conversation. PitzGerald gossips pleasantly 
about himself, his tastes, opinions, and surroundings, much 
as a man might do with a familiar friend. His are pre- 
eminently the letters of Friendship. He has retained the 
child-like nature, and is therefore joyous and tranquil. 
The impression which he makes is of an English meadow, 
starred with daffodils which shift and glitter in an Easter 
wind beside a slow midland river, which runs without sound 
to a sea whose mysterious heart-throb is heard at long in- 
tervals. The voice of PitzGerald has no piercing accent in 
it ; it is in tune with the soft tranquillity of nature ; but it 



ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING 21 

soothes, and it releases the spirit in bondage to the world. 
One can understand how it was that Thackeray said that 
of all his friends, " Old Fitz " was the one he had loved the 
best. Perhaps also among all the letters of our age, these 
are those which men will love most; and no finer tribute 
can be paid to them. 

Stevenson's letters are also letters of conversation, but 
of a much gayer and more nimble quality. If FitzGerald 
suggests the placid midland river, he suggests the rapid 
Highland stream, clear, loudly vocal, sparklingly vivacious, 
tossing up rainbows as it passes, shouting and singing in 
abandonment of mirth, yet also with its deep still pools 
in which eternal things hang reflected. He is too acute, 
too restless, too conscious of himself for more than brief 
intimacy ; a companion on the road rather than an intimate 
of the hearthstone. His mission is to stimulate; we walk 
more cheerfully the moment we are of his company. He 
has a rare power of making ordinary things seem pleasant 
and original. He treats life as an adventure, and he makes 
us breathe the atmosphere of courage, expanse, and world- 
wideness in which he moves. And in all, the sense of 
personality is so strong that we lose the consciousness of 
any barrier of writing between ourselves and him; it is 
rather the magic of real speech he casts upon us, as though 
he talked to us alone. 

To these great names one more may be added, which is 
relatively unknown, that of James Smetham. Smetham 
was an artist with a true poetic sense, as those know who, 
like myself, have seen his pictures. He was the friend 
of Rossetti, who truly appreciated his work ; but for various 
reasons Smetham was unable to make his art popular. 
His life was therefore a long struggle against disappoint- 
ment and poverty, and this failure of the outward life 
threw him back upon the inward. Happy indeed the man 



22 THE ART AND ATTAINMENT OF 

who has a " city of the mind " to which he can retire, as 
Smetham did, when the outward world offered no hospi- 
tality. There he found release and renewal, and his letters 
are the record of this inner life. They are full of fine 
thought, exquisitely expressed, with occasional passages of 
imagination which have all the charm of poetry; they 
exhibit throughout a nature of rare gentleness, patience, 
and equipoise. They are in the first rank of Intellectual 
letters; letters that is which express thought. This does 
not imply that he exceeds either Carlyle or Keats in intel- 
lect; but merely that his life is more exclusively inward 
than theirs. He lives in the mind only; and mind con- 
quers for him his worldly failures, atones for them, and 
enables him to be triumphantly resigned. He is always sane 
and logical, never drunk with sensation as Keats is, never 
bitter as Carlyle is ; he has reached " the quiet seats above 
the thunder," from which he sees the world and its loud 
strife as something far below him and of no importance. 
Hence, even more than Fitz Gerald, he conveys the impres- 
sion of serenity, but it is of a different quality ; FitzGerald 
is at home with the world, Smetham has conquered it. 

That so much can be said of a man who is even yet al- 
most unknown to discriminating readers suggests a final 
thought. We speak confidently of great letter-writers, but 
how can we be sure that there are not far greater whose 
work is unknown to us ? That a letter should be preserved 
at all argues not only something worthy or remarkable in 
it, but also some distinction in the writer, which gives 
prestige and value to his letter. But how often have the 
greatest men moved among their contemporaries un- 
remarked, or at least unrecognised in the special rarity of 
their endowment? What would we not give for a packet 
of the familiar letters of Shakespeare? Such letters he 
must have written, but because none of his contemporaries 



ENGLISH LETTER-WRITING 23 

knew the real measure of his genius, no one thought it 
worth while to preserve his epistles. Thus it may well 
happen that the greatest of all letter-writers have passed 
out of the world unrecognised, and have left no memorial. 
A thousand letters, nay a thousand thousand, which have 
perhaps recorded the pathos and the tragedy of life more 
poignantly than " Hamlet " or " In Memoriam," have been 
read casually, put into a drawer, and forgotten, and finally 
cast into the fire upon some change of circumstance. It is 
merely by an accident that a thing so fugitive as a letter, 
committed as it is to the insecure custody of a single 
individual who may prove careless or inappreciative, sur- 
vives at all ; but for the one accident that redeems it from 
oblivion, there are a hundred others that are only too likely 
to destroy it. For the epistolary art is very delicate and 
shy; it is like the little arbutus flower, which comes to its 
perfection of purity and perfume beneath the snow and out 
of sight; and it often withers and dies before any human 
eye has learned its worth. 

So then, the finest letters of all may be those which 
have perished, or those kept in jealous privacy, or those 
which are too sacred for open knowledge. And the letters 
which the world knows and values may be after all but a 
scanty tithe from a rich field whose full harvest has long 
since been dispersed. This thought is sufficient to humble 
the pretensions of a categorical criticism, and to make the 
authoritative note impossible. The most that we dare to 
say is not that we have collected in one sheaf of excellence 
the best letters in English literature, but only the best we 
know; and that while the student may discover better in 
certain hidden by-ways of biography, here, at least, are 
those which do faithfully represent those elements which 
sustain the claim that letter-writing is an art, and fine 
letter-writing one of the rarest arts of literature. 



I 

By-Gone Lovers 



The pleasing transport. 

Richard Steele (1672-1729) 

An old world courtship. 

Lady Mary Montagu (1689-1762) 

A rustic tragedy. 

Alexander Pope ( 1688-17 U) 

" What a dishclout of a soul hast thou made of me ! " 

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) 

A letter which was never sent. 

Lord Byron (1788-1824) 

The love of a poet. 
Its sequel. 

The aftermath. 



John Keats (1795-1821) 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

Josejih Severn (1793-1879) 

William Haslam (dates unknown) 



Leigh Hunt (1784-1859) 
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

Mazzini is beloved by a Jewish lady, 

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866) 

Deceived in her birthday letter. 

Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866) 

Learning to love. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) 

Defending her union with Mr, George H. Lewes. 

Oeorge Eliot (1819-1880) 



The Pleasing Transport 

Dich Steele to his Molly 

Smith Street, Westminster, 1707. 
Madam, — I lay down last night with your image in my 
thoughts, and have awak'd this morning in the same con- 
templation. The pleasing transport with which I'me de- 
lighted, has a sweetnesse in it attended with a train of ten 
thousand soft desires, anxieties, and cares; the day arises 
on my hopes with new brightnesse ; youth, beauty and inno- 
cence are the charming objects that steal me from myself, 
and give me joys above the reach of ambition, pride or 
glory. Believe me, fair one, to throw myself at your feet 
is giving my self the highest blisse I know on Earth. Oh 
hasten ye minutes! bring on the happy morning wherein 
to be ever her's will make me look down on thrones ! Dear 
Molly, I am tenderly, passionately, faithfully thine, 

EiCHARD Steele. 

An Old World Courtship 

Lady Mary Montagu to Mr. Worthy Montagu, her hus- 
band to be.^ 

I 

March 28, 1710. 
Give me leave to say it (I know it sounds vain), I know 
how to make a man of sense happy; but then that man 

^ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was the daughter of Evelyn 
Pierrepont, Esq., who afterwards became the Duke of Kingston. 
Her brilliant mental parts first attracted the attention of her 
future husband when she was but fourteen years of age. He 
was very much her senior. A correspondence grew up between 

27 



28 BY-GONE LOVERS 

must resolve to contribute something towards it himself. 
I have so much esteem for you, I should be very sorry to 
hear you was unhappy; but for the world I would not be 
the instrument of making you so; which (of the humour 
you are) is hardly to be avoided if I am your wife. You 
distrust me — I can neither be easy, nor loved, where I am 
distrusted. Nor do I believe your passion for me is what 
you pretend it ; at least I am sure was I in love I could not 
talk as you do. Few women would have spoken so plainly 
as I have done; but to dissemble is among the things I 
never do. I take more pains to approve my conduct to 
myself than to the world; and would not have to accuse 
myself of a minute's deceit. I wish I loved you enough 
to devote myself to be forever miserable, for the pleasure 
of a day or twp's happiness. I cannot resolve upon it. 
You must think otherwise of me, or not at all. 

I don't enjoin you to burn this letter. I know you will. 
'Tis the first I ever writ to one of your sex, and shall be the 
last. You must never expect another. I resolve against 
all correspondence of the kind; my resolutions are seldom 
made, and never broken. 

herself and Miss Anne Wortley, Mr. Wortley Montagu's sister, 
wherein she repeatedly asked for guidance in her studies, criticism 
and advice, answers to which questions it fell to the lot of the 
brother to dictate. After the death of Anne, the letters passed 
to Mr. Wortley Montagu direct. An affection sprang up, and 
matters were finally settled between the lovers; all that re- 
mained was a request for the lady's father's consent. The 
Marquis of Dorchester, as he had now become, conditioned his 
approval with a form of settlement to which Mr. Wortley Mon- 
tagu refused to agree. Matters were at a halt. In Lady Mary's 
twenty-fourth year, her father chose out for her another suitor 
with whom he insisted she should wed. She appealed to Mr. 
Wortley Montagu, who settled the difficulty by eloping in her 
company. They were married August, 1712. 



LADY MARY MONTAGU ^9 



II 

[Postmark April 25, 1710.] 
One part of my character is not so good, nor t'other so 
bad, as you fancy it. Should we ever live together, you 
would be disappointed both ways; you would find an easy 
equality of temper you do not expect, and a thousand faults 
you do not imagine. You think, if you married me, I 
should be passionately fond of you one month, and of some- 
body else the next : neither would happen. I can esteem, 
I can be a friend, but I don't know whether I can love. 
Expect all that is complaisant and easy, but never what is 
fond, in me. You judge very wrong of my heart, when 
you suppose me capable of views of interest, and that any- 
thing could oblige me to flatter any body. Was I the most 
indigent creature in the world, I should answer you as I do 
now, without adding or diminishing. I am incapable of 
art, and 'tis because I will not be capable of it. Could I 
deceive one minute, I should never regain my own good 
opinion; and who could bear to live with one they despised? 
If you can resolve to live with a companion that will 
have all the deference due to your superiority of good sense, 
and that your proposals can be agreeable to those on whom 
I depend, I have nothing to say against them. 

As to travelling, 'tis what I should do with great pleas- 
ure, and could easily quit London upon your account; but 
a retirement in the country is not so disagreeable to me, as 
I know a few months would make it tiresome to you. 
Where people are tied for life, 'tis their mutual interest 
not to grow weary of one another. If I had all the per- 
sonal charms that I want, a face is too slight a foundation 
for happiness. You would be soon tired with seeing every 
day the same thing. Where you saw nothing else, you 



30 BY-GONE LOVERS 

would have leisure to remark all the defects; which would 
increase in proportion as the novelty lessened, which is al- 
ways a great charm. I should have the displeasure of 
seeing a coldness, which, though I could not reasonably 
blame you for, being involuntary, yet it would render me 
uneasy; and the more, because I know a love may be re- 
vived which absence, inconstancy, or even infidelity, has 
extinguished; but there is no returning from a degout 
given by satiety. 

Ill 

[About November, 1710.] 
Indeed I do not at all wonder that absence, and variety 
of new faces, should make you forget me ; but I am a little 
surprized at your curiosity to know what passes in my heart 
(a thing wholly insignificant to you), except you propose 
to yourself a piece of ill-natured satisfaction, in finding me 
very much disquieted. Pray which way would you see into 
my heart? You can frame no guesses about it from either 
my speaking or writing; and, supposing I should attempt 
to show it you, I know no other way. 

I begin to be tired of my humility: I have carried my 
complaisances to you farther than I ought. You make 
new scruples; you have a great deal of fancy; and your 
distrusts being all of your own making, are more immova- 
ble than if there was some real ground for them. Our 
aunts and grandmothers always tell us that men are a sort 
of animals, that, if ever they are constant, 'tis only where 
they are ill used. 'Twas a kind of paradox I could never 
believe: experience has taught me the truth of it. You 
are the first I ever had a correspondence with, and I thank 
God I have done with it for all my life. You needed not to 
have told me you are not what you have been : one must be 
stupid not to find a difference in your letters. You seem. 



LADY MARY MONTAGU 31 

in one part of your last, to excuse yourself from having 
done me any injury in point of fortune. Do I accuse you 
of any? 

I have not spirits to dispute any longer with you. You 
say you are not yet determined : let me determine for you, 
and save you the trouble of writing again. Adieu for ever ! 
make no answer. I wish, among the variety of acquaint- 
ance, you may find some one to please you; and can't help 
the vanity of thinking, should you try them all, you won't 
find one that will be so sincere in their treatment, though 
a thousand more deserving, and every one happier. 'Tis a 
piece of vanity and injustice I never forgive in a woman, to 
delight to give pain ; what must I think of a man that takes 
pleasure in making me uneasy? After the folly of letting 
you know it is in your power, I ought in prudence to let 
this go no farther, except I thought you had good nature 
enough never to make use of that power. I have no rea- 
son to think so: however, I am willing, you see, to do 
you the highest obligation 'tis possible for me to do; that 
is, to give you a fair occasion of being rid of me. 

IV 

Tuesday night [August ^ 1712]. 
If we marry, our happiness must consist in loving one 
another: 'tis principally my concern to think of the most 
probable method of making that love eternal. You object 
against living in London ; I am not fond of it myself, and 
readily give it up to you ; though I am assured there needs 
more art to keep a fondness alive in solitude, where it gen- 
erally preys upon itself. There is one article absolutely 
necessary — to be ever beloved, one must be ever agreeable. 
There is no such thing as being agreeable, without a 
thorough good humour, a natural sweetness of temper, en- 



32 BY-GONE LOVERS 

livened by cheerfulness. Whatever natural fund of gaiety 
one is born with, 'tis necessary to be entertained with agree- 
able objects. Anybody, capable of tasting pleasure, when 
they confine themselves to one place, should take care 'tis 
the place in the world the most pleasing. Whatever you 
may now think (now, perhaps, you have some fondness for 
me), though your love should continue in its full force, 
there are hours when the most beloved mistress would be 
troublesome. People are not [for] ever (nor is it in 
human nature they should be) disposed to be fond; you 
would be glad to find in me the friend and the companion. 
To be agreeably this last, it is necessary to be gay and enter- 
taining. A perpetual solitude, in a place where you see 
nothing to raise your spirits, at length wears them out, and 
conversation insensibly falls into dull and insipid. When 
I have no more to say to you, you will like me no longer. 
How dreadful is that view! You will reflect for my sake 
you have abandoned the conversation of a friend that you 
liked, and your situation in a country where all things 
would have contributed to make your life pass in (the true 
volupte) a smooth tranquillity. I shall lose the vivacity 
that should entertain you, and you will have nothing to 
recompense you for what you have lost. Very few people 
that have settled entirely in the country, but have grown 
at length weary of one another. The lady's conversation 
generally falls into a thousand impertinent eiffects of idle- 
ness; and the gentleman falls in love with his dogs and 
horses, and out of love with everything else. I am not now 
arguing in favour of the town; you have answered me as to 
that point. In respect of your health, 'tis the first thing 
to be considered, and I shall never ask you to do anything 
injurious to that. But 'tis my opinion, 'tis necessary, to 
being happy, that we neither of us think any place more 
agreeable than that where we are. 



ALEXANDER POPE 



Friday night [15th Aug., 1712]. 

I tremble for what we are doing. — Are you sure you will 
love me for ever? Shall we never repent? I fear and 
I hope. I foresee all that will happen on this occasion. I 
shall incense my family in the highest degree. The gen- 
erality of the world will blame my conduct, and the rela- 
tions and friends of will invent a thousand stories of 

me ; yet, ^tis possible, you may recompense everything to me. 
In this letter, which I am fond of, you promise me all that 
I wish. Since I writ so far, I received your Friday let- 
ter. I will be only yours, and I will do what you please. 

You shall hear from me again to-morrow, not to contra- 
dict, but to give some directions. My resolution is taken. 
Love me and use me well. 

A Rustic Tragedy 

Alexander Pope to Lady Mary Worthy Montagu 

September 1 [1717]. 
I have a mind to fill the rest of this paper with an acci- 
dent that happened just under my eyes, and has made a 
great impression upon me. I have just passed part of 
this summer at an old romantic seat of Lord Harcourt's, 
which he lent me.^ It overlooks a common field, where, 

* In 1737, Pope published, by subscription, a volume of letters 
between himself and his literary friends. Part of the collection 
had been previously issued by Curll, the notorious publisher of 
that day, to whom Pope had, by the agency of other parties, 
conveyed an edition privately printed. Having induced Curll to 
advertise the volume as containing letters of certain noblemen, 
the publisher was summoned before the House of Lords for breach 
of privilege. When it was examined, it was found to contain 
no single letter from any nobleman; therefore Curll was dis- 
missed. Pope now made this his excuse for putting forth a genu- 



34 BY-GONE LOVERS 

under the shade of a haycock, sat two lovers, as constant 
as ever were found in romance, beneath a spreading beech. 
The name of the one — let it sound as it will — was John 
Hewett; of the other, Sarah Drew. John was a well-set 
man about five-and-twenty ; Sarah, a brown woman of 
eighteen. John had for several months borne the labour 
of the day in the same field with Sarah ; when she milked 
it was his morning and evening charge to bring the cows 
to her pail. Their love was the talk, but not the scan- 
dal, of the whole neighbourhood; for all they aimed at 
was the blameless possession of each other in marriage. 
It was but this very morning that he had obtained her 
parents' consent, and it was but till the next week that they 
were to wait to be happy. Perhaps this very day, in the 
intervals of their work, they were talking of their wedding 
clothes ; and John was now matching several kinds of pop- 
pies and field-flowers to her complexion, to make her a 
present of knots for the day. While they were thus em- 
ployed — it was on the last of July — a terrible storm of 
thunder and lightning arose, that drove the labourers to 
what shelter the trees or hedges afforded. Sarah, fright- 
ened and out of breath, sunk on a haycock, and John — 
who never separated from her — sat by her side, having 
raked two or three heaps together to secure her. Imme- 

ine collection, having by these means secured a magnificent ad- 
vertisement and made certain of a large sale. In reality there was 
little difference between the two editions, Pope having prepared 
them both. Some of the letters therein contained certainly had 
no place in an actual correspondence; many, perhaps most, of 
them had. The experiment of publishing letters was new to 
the public of Pope's day. Dr. Johnson says of it, " Pope's episto- 
lary excellence had an open field; he had no English rival, living 
or dead." This, then, was the first English attempt to interest 
the public in the private and familiar friendships of literary 
men by way of their published letters. 



LAURENCE STERNE 35 

diately there was heard so loud a crack as if heaven had 
burst asunder. The labourers, all solicitous for each 
other's safety, called to one another; those that were near- 
est our lovers hearing no answer, stepped to the place where 
they lay ; they first saw a little smoke, and after, this faith- 
ful pair — John with one arm about his Sarah's neck, and 
the other held over her face, as if to screen her from the 
lightning. They were struck dead, and already grown 
stiff and cold in this tender posture. There was no mark 
or discolouring on their bodies, only that Sarah's eyebrow 
was a little singed, and a small spot between her breasts. 

" What a Dishclout of a Soul Hast Thou Made of 

Me!" 

Laurence Sterne to " Lady T." 

Mount Coffee-house, Tuesday, 3 o'clock. 

There is a strange mechanical effect produced in writ- 
ing a billet-doux within a stone-cast of the lady who en- 
grosses the heart and soul of an inamorato. For this cause 
(but mostly because I am to dine in this neighbourhood) 
have I, Tristram Shandy, come forth from my lodgings to 
a coffee-house, the nearest I could find to my dear Lady 

's house, and have called for a sheet of gilt paper, 

to try the truth of this article of my creed. Now for it 

my dear lady, what a dishclout of a soul hast thou 
made of me ! I think, by the bye, this is a little too famil- 
iar an introduction for so unfamiliar a situation — as I 
stand in with you — where, heaven knows, I am kept at a 
distance — and despair of getting one inch nearer you, with 
all the steps and windings I can think of to recommend 
myself to you. Would not any man in his senses run 
diametrically from you — and as far as his legs would carry 
him, rather than thus causelessly, foolishly, and foolhardily 



36 BY-GONE LOVERS 

expose himself afresh — and afresh^ where his heart and his 
reason tell him he shall be sure to come off loser^ if not 
totally undone? Why would you tell me you would be 
glad to see me? Does it give you pleasure to make me 
more happy — or does it add to your triumph^ that your eyes 
and lips have turned a man into a fool^ whom the rest of 
the town is courting as a wit ? I am a fool — the weakest, 
the most ductile, the most tender fool, that ever woman 
tried the weakness of — and the most unsettled in my pur- 
poses and resolutions of recovering my right mind. — It is 
but an hour ago, that I kneeled down and swore I never 
would come near you — and after saying my Lord's Prayer 
for the sake of the close, of not teing led into temptation — 
out I sallied like any Christian hero, ready to take the 
field against the world, the flesh and the devil ; not doubt- 
ing that I should finally trample them all down under my 
feet; and now I am got so near you — ^within this vile 
stone's cast of your house — I feel myself drawn into a 
vortex, that has turned my brain upside downwards, and 
though I had purchased a box ticket to carry me to Miss 

's benefit, yet I know very well, that was a single line 

directed to me, to let me know Lady would be alone at 

seven, and suffer me to spend the evening with her, she 
would infallibly see everything verified I have told her. — 
I dine at Mr. C r's in Wigmore Street, in this neigh- 
bourhood, where I shall stay till seven in hopes you propose 
to put me to this proof. If I hear nothing by that time, I 
shall conclude that you are better disposed of — and shall 
take a sorry hack, and sorrily jog on to the play — curse on 
the word. I know nothing but sorrow — except this one 
thing, that I love you (perhaps foolishly, but) 

most sincerely, 

L. Sterne. 



LORD BYRON 37 

A Letter which was Never Sent 
Lord Byron to Lady Byron.^ 

Pisa, November 17, 1821. 

I have to acknowledge the receipt of " Ada's hair " which 
is very soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as 
mine was at twelve years old, if I may Judge from what I 
recollect of some in Augusta's possession, taken at that 
age. But it don't curl, — perhaps from its being let 
grow. 

I also thank you for the inscription of the date and 
name, and I will tell you why: — I believe that they are 
the only two or three words of your handwriting in my 
possession. For your letters I returned; and except the 
two words, or rather the one word, " Household " written 
twice in an old account book, I have no other. I burnt 
your last note, for two reasons : — firstly, it was written in 
a style not very agreeable ; and, secondly, I wished to take 
your word without documents, which are the worldly re- 
sources of suspicious people. 

I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about 
Ada's birthday — the 10th of December, I believe. She 
will then be six, so that in about twelve more I shall have 
some chance of meeting her — perhaps gooner, if I am 
obliged to go to England by business or otherwise. Recol- 
lect, however, one thing, either in distance or nearness; — 
every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a 
period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which must al- 
ways have one rallying-point as long as our child exists, 
which I presume we both hope will be long after either of 
her parents. 

* Miss Milbanke became Lady Byron on the second of January, 
1815. On January 15, 1816, she left Lord Byron never to return. 



38 BY-GONE LOVERS 

The time which has elapsed since the separation has 
been considerably more than the whole brief period of our 
union, and the not much longer one of our prior acquaint- 
ance. We both made a bitter mistake; but now it is over, 
and irrevocably so. For, at thirty-three on my part, and 
a few years less on yours, though it is no very extended 
period of life, still it is one when the habits and thought 
are generally so formed as to admit of no modification; 
and as we could not agree when younger, we should with 
difficulty do so now. 

I say all this, because I own to you, that, notwith- 
standing everything, I considered our re-union as not im- 
possible for more than a year after the separation; — ^but 
then I gave up the hope entirely and forever. But this 
very impossibility of re-union seems to me at least a rea- 
son why, on all the few points of discussion which can 
arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, 
and as much of its kindness as people who are never to 
meet may preserve perhaps more easily than nearer con- 
nexions. For my own part, I am violent, but not malig- 
nant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my resent- 
ments. To you, who are colder and more concentrated, I 
would just hint that you may sometimes mistake the depth 
of a cold anger for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. 
I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I may havif 
done) no resentment whatever. Eemember, that if you 
have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is something; 
and that, if I have injured you, it is something more still, 
if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending 
are the least forgiving. 

Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or re- 
ciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon 
any but two things — viz., that you are the mother of my 
child, and that we shall never meet again. I think if you 



JOHN KEATS 39 

also consider the two corresponding points with reference 
to myself, it will be better for all three. 

Yours ever, 

Noel Byron. 

The Love of a Poet 



Jolm Keats to Fanny Brawne 
Wentworth Place, Hampstead, Middx. 

Shanklin, 
Isle of Wight, Thursday [1 July, 1819]. 
[Postmark, Newport, 3 July 1819.] 
My dearest Lady^ 

I am glad I had not an opportunity of sending off a 
Letter which I wrote for you on Tuesday night — 'twas 
too much like one out of Ro [u] sseau's Heloise. I am more 
reasonable this morning. The morning is the only proper 
time for me to write to a beautiful Girl whom I love so 
much; for at night, when the lonely day has closed, and 
the lonely, silent, unmusical Chamber is waiting to receive 
me as into a Sepulchre, then believe me my passion gets 
entirely the sway, then I -should not have you see those 
E[h]apsodies which I once thought it impossible I should 
ever give way to, and which I have often laughed at in 
another, for fear you should [think me] either too un- 
happy or perhaps a little mad. I am now at a very pleas- 
ant Cottage window, looking onto a beautiful hilly country, 
with a glimpse of the sea; the morning is very fine. I do 
not know how elastic my spirit might be, what pleasure I 
might have in living here and breathing and wandering 
as free as a stag about this beautiful Coast if the remem- 
brance of you did not weigh so upon me. I have never 
known any unalloy'd Happiness for many days together; 



40 BY-GONE LOVERS 

the death or sickness of some one has always spoilt my hours 
— and now when none such troubles oppress me^ it is you 
must confess very hard that another sort of pain should 
haunt me. Ask yourself my love whether you are not 
very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my 
freedom. Will you confess this in the Letter you must 
write immediately and do all you can to console me in it — 
make it rich as a draught of poppies to intoxicate me — 
write the softest words and kiss them that I may at least 
touch my lips where yours have been. For myself I know 
not how to express my devotion to so fair a form : I want 
a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I 
almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three sum- 
mer days — three such days with you I could fill with more 
delight than fifty common years could ever contain. But 
however selfish I may feel, I am sure I could never act 
selfishly: as I told you a day or two before I left Hamp- 
stead, I will never return to London if my Fate does not 
turn up Pam^ or at least a Court-card. Though I could 
centre my happiness in you, I cannot expect to engross 
your heart so entirely — indeed if I thought you felt as 
much for me as I do for you at this moment I do not 
think I could restrain myself from seeing you again to- 
morrow for the delight of one embrace. But no — I must 
live upon hope and Chance. In case of the worst that can 
happen, I shall still love you — but what hatred shall I have 
for another ! Some lines I read the other day are con- 
tinually ringing a peal in my ears : 

* Pam is the knave of clubs in the game of loo. 

EVn mighty Pam, that kings and queens o'erthrew, 
And mow'd down armies in the fights of Loo, 
Sad chance of war! now destitute of aid, 
Falls undistinguish'd by the victor Spade! 

— Pope's Rape of the Lock, III., 61-64. 



JOHN KEATS 41 

To see those eyes I prize above mine own 
Dart favors on another — 

And those sweet lips (yielding immortal nectar) 
Be gently press'd by any but myself — 
Think, think Francesca, what a cursed thing 
It were beyond expression! 

J. 

Do write immediately. There is no Post from this Place, 
so you must address Post Office, Newport, Isle of Wight. 
I know before night I shall curse myself for having sent 
you so cold a letter ; yet it is better to do it as much in my 
senses as possible. Be as kind as the distance will permit 

to your 

J. Keats. 

Present my Compliments to your mother, my love to 
Margaret and best remembrances to your Brother — if you 
please so/ 

II 

Wentworth Place, Hampstead, Middx. 

July Stli, 
{PostmarTc, Newport, 10 July 1818.] 
My sweet Girl^ 

Your Letter gave me more delight than anything in 
the world but yourself could do; indeed I am almost 
astonished that any absent one should have that luxurious 
power over my senses which I feel. Even when I am not 
thinking of you I receive your influence and a tenderer 
nature stealing upon me. All my thoughts, my unhap- 
piest days and nights, have I find not at all cured me of 
my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am mis- 
erable that you are not with me; or rather breathe in 
that dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. I 



42 BY-GONE LOVERS 

never knew before, what such a love as you have made me 
feel, was; I did not believe in it; my Fancy was afraid of 
it, lest it should burn me up. But if you will fully love 
me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than 
we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures. 
You mention "horrid people " and ask me whether it 
depend upon them whether I see you again. Do under- 
stand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in my 
heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of 
harm befalling you. I would never see any thing but 
Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in 
your steps. I would wish to see you among those amuse- 
ments suitable to your inclinations and spirits ; so that our 
loves might be a delight in the midst of Pleasures agree- 
able enough, rather than a resource from vexations and 
cares. But I doubt much, in case of the worst, whether I 
shall be philosopher enough to follow my own Lessons: 
if I saw my resolution give you a pain I could not. Why 
may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I 
could never have lov'd you ? 

I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have 
for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for 
which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest 
respect and can admire it in others; but it has not the 
richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of 
love after my own heart. So let me speak of your Beauty, 
though to my own endangering ; if you could be so cruel to 
me as to try elsewhere its Power. You say you are afraid 
I shall think you do not love me — in saying this you make 
me ache the more to be near you. I am at the diligent use 
of my faculties here, I do not pass a day without sprawl- 
ing some blank verse or tagging some rhymes; and here 
I must confess, that (since I am on that subject) I love 
you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my 



JOHN KEATS 43 

own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women 
whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem 
and to be given away by a Novel. I have seen your Comet, 
and only wish it was a sign that poor Eice would get well 
whose illness makes him rather a melancholy companion; 
and the more so as to conquer his feelings and hide them 
from me, with a forc'd Pun. I kiss'd your writing over 
in the hope you had indulged me by leaving a trace of 
honey. What was your dream? Tell it me and I will tell 
you the interpretation thereof. 

Ever yours, my love ! 

John Keats. 

Do not accuse me of delay — we have not here an oppor- 
tunity of sending letters every day. Write speedily. 

Ill 

Wentworth Place, Hampstead, Middx. 

Shanklin, 

Thursday Evening 

[15 July 1819?] 
My Love, 

I have been in so irritable a state of health these two 
or three last days, that I did not think I should be able to 
write this week. Not that I was so ill, but so much so as 
only to be capable of an unhealthy teasing letter. To-night 
I am greatly recovered only to feel the languor I have felt 
after you touched with ardency. You say you perhaps 
might have made me better; you would then have made 
me worse; now you could quite effect a cure: What fee 
my sweet Physician would I not give you to do so. Do not 
call it folly, when I tell you I took your letter last night 
to bed with me. In the morning I found your name on 



44 BY-GONE LOVERS 

the sealing wax obliterated. I was startled at the bad 
omen till I recollected that it must have happened in my 
dreams, and they you know fall out by contraries. You 
must have found out by this time I am a little given tO' 
bode ill like the raven; it is my misfortune not my fault; 
it has proceeded from the general tenor of the circum- 
stances of my life, and rendered every event suspicious. 
However I will no more trouble either you or myself with 
sad Prophecies : though so far I am pleased at it as it has 
given me opportunity to love your disinterestedness to- 
wards me. I can be a raven no more; you and pleasure 
take possession of me at the same moment. I am afraid 
you have been unwell. If through me illness have touched 
you (but it must be with a very gentle hand) I must be 
selfish enough to feel a little glad at it. Will you forgive 
me this? I have been reading lately an oriental tale of a 
very beautiful color — It is of a city of melancholy men, 
all made so by this circumstance. Through a series of ad- 
ventures each one of them by turns reach some gardens of 
Paradise where they meet with a most enchanting Lady; 
and just as they are going to embrace her, she bids them 
shut their eyes — they shut them — and on opening their 
eyes again find themselves descending to the earth in a 
magic basket. The remembrance of this Lady and their 
delights lost beyond all recovery render them melancholy 
ever after. How I applied this to you, my dear; how I 
palpitated at it; how the certainty that you were in the 
same world with myself, and though as beautiful, not so 
talismanic as that Lady; how I could not bear you should 
be so you must believe because I swear it by yourself. I 
cannot say when I shall get a volume ready. I have three 
or four stories half done, but as I cannot write for the 
mere sake of the press, I am obliged to let them progress 
or lie still as my fancy chooses. By Christmas perhaps 



JOHN KEATS 45 

they may appear, but I am not yet sure they ever will. 
'Twill be no matter, for Poems are as common as news- 
papers and I do not see why it is a greater crime in me 
than in another to let the verses of an half -fledged brain 
tumble into the reading-rooms and drawing room win- 
dows. Eice has been better lately than usual; he is not 
suffering from any neglect of his parents who have for 
some years been able to appreciate him better than they 
did in his first youth, and are now devoted to his comfort. 
To-morrow I shall, if my health continues to improve dur- 
ing the night, take a look fa[r]ther about the country, 
and spy at the parties about here who come hunting after 
the picturesque like beagles. It is astonishing how they 
raven down scenery like children do sweetmeats. The won- 
drous Chine here is a very great Lion; I wish I had as 
many guineas as there have been spy-glasses in it. I have 
been, I cannot tell why, in capital spirits this last hour. 
What reason? When I have to take my candle and retire 
to a lonely room, without the thought as I fall asleep, of 
seeing you to-morrow morning? or the next day, or the 
next — it takes on the appearance of impossibility and eter- 
nity — I will say a month — I will say I will see you in a 
month at most, though no one but yourself should see me ; 
if it be but for an hour. I should not like to be so near 
you as London without being continually with you; after 
having once more kissed you Sweet I would rather be 
here alone at my task than in the bustle and hateful liter- 
ary chitchat. Meantime you must write to me — as I will 
every week — for your letters keep me alive. My sweet 
Girl I cannot speak my love for you. Good night ! and 

Ever yours 
John Keats 



46 BY-GONE LOVERS 

IV 

Wentworth Place, Hampstead. 

25 College Street. 
[Postmark 13 October 1819.] 
My dearest Girl^ 

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses 
out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. 
I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in 
dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. 
Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else. The time is 
passed when I had power to advise and warn you against 
the unpromising morning of my Life. My love has made 
me selfish. I cannot exist without you. I am forgetful of 
everything but seeing you again — ^my Life seems to stop 
there — I see no further. You have absorbed me. I have 
a sensation at the present moment as though I was dis- 
solving — I should be exquisitely miserable without the 
hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate 
myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart 
never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to 
my love .... Your note came in just here. I cannot 
be happier away from you. ^Tis richer than an Argosy of 
Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been 
astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have 
shudder'd at it. I shudder no more — I could be martyr'd 
for my Eeligion — Love is my religion — I could die for 
that. I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are 
its only tenet. You have ravish'd me away by a Power I 
cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and 
even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often "to 
reason against the reasons of my Love. " I can do that 



JOHN KEATS 47 

no more — the pain would be too great. My love is selfish. 
I cannot breathe without you. 

Yours for ever 
/ John Keats. 



[Wentworth Place, 
4 Fehruanj 1820?] 
Dearest Fanny, I shall send this the moment you re- 
turn. They say I must remain confined to this room for 
some time. The consciousness that you love me will make 
a pleasant prison of the house next to yours. You must 
come and see me frequently: this evening, without fail — 
when you must not mind about my speaking in a low tone 
for I am ordered to do so though I can speak out. 

Yours ever 

sweetest love. — 

J. Keats. 



VI 

[Wentworth Place, 

February 1820?] 
My dear Fanny^ 

I think you had better not make any long stay with 
me when Mr. Brown is at home. Whenever he goes out 
you may bring your work. You will have a pleasant walk 
to-day. I shall see you pass. I shall follow you with my 
eyes over the Heath. Will you come towards evening in- 
stead of before dinner? When you are gone, 'tis past — 
if you do not come till the evening I have something to 
look forward to all day. Come round to my window for 
a moment when you have read this. Thank your Mother, 



48 BY-GONE LOVERS 

for the preserves, for me. The raspberry will be too sweet 
not having any acid ; therefore as you are so good a girl I 
shall make you a present of it. Good bye 

My sweet Love ! 

J. Keats. 



VII 

[Wentworth Place, 

March 1820?] 
Sweetest Fanny^ 

You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as 
you wish? My dear Girl I love you ever and ever and 
without reserve. The more I have known you the more 
have I lov'd. In every way — even my jealousies have been 
agonies of Love, in the hottest fit I ever had I would have 
died for you. I have vex'd you too much. But for Love ! 
Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your 
kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; 
the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass'd my 
window home yesterday, I was fill'd with as much admi- 
ration as if I had then seen you for the first time. You 
uttered a half complaint once that I only lov'd your 
Beauty. Have I nothing else then to love in you but that ? 
Do not I see a heart naturally furnish'd with wings im- 
prison itself with me? No ill prospect has been able to 
turn your thoughts a moment from me. This perhaps 
should be as much a subject of sorrow as joy — ^but I will 
not talk of that. Even if you did not love me I could 
not help an entire devotion to you : how much more deeply 
then must I feel for you knowing you love me. My 
Mind has been the most discontented and restless one that 
ever was put into a body too small for it. I never felt my 
Mind repose upon anything with complete and undis- 



JOHN KEATS 49 

tracted enjoyment — upon no person but you. When you 
are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window : you 
always concentrate my whole senses. The anxiety shown 
about our Loves in your last note is an immense pleasure 
to me : however you must not suffer such speculations to 
molest you any more : nor will I any more believe you can 
have the least pique against me. Brown is gone out — 
but here is Mrs. Wylie — when she is gone I shall be awake 
for you. — Remembrances to your Mother. 

Your affectionate 

J. Keats. 



VIII 

Wednesday Morn [in] g. 
[Kentish Town, 5 July 1820?] 
My dearest Girl^ 

I have been a walk this morning with a book in my 
hand, but as usual I have been occupied with nothing but 
you; I wish I could say in an agreeable manner. I am 
tormented day and night. They talk of my going to Italy. 
'Tis certain I shall never recover if I am to be so long 
separate from you : yet with all this devotion to you I can- 
not persuade myself into any confidence of you. Past ex- 
perience connected with the fact of my long separation 
from you gives me agonies which are scarcely to be talked 
of. When your mother comes I shall be very sudden and 
expert in asking her whether you have been to Mrs. Dilke's, 
for she might say no to make me easy. I am literally 
worn to death, which seems my only recourse. I cannot 
forget what has pass'd. What? nothing with a man of the 
world, but to me dreadful. I will get rid of this as much 
as possible. When you were in the habit of flirting with 
Brown you would have left off, could your own heart have 



50 BY-GONE LOVERS 

felt one half of one pang mine did. Brown is a good sort 
of Man — he did not know he was doing me to death by 
inches. I feel the effect of every one of those hours in my 
side now ; and for that cause, though he has done me many 
services, though I know his love and friendship for me, 
though at this moment I should be without pence were 
it net for his assistance, I will never see or speak to him 
until we are both old men, if we are to be. I will resent 
my heart having been made a football. You will call this 
madness. I have heard you say that it was not unpleasant 
to wait a few years — you have amusements — jout mind ia 
away — you have not brooded over one idea as I have, and 
how should you? You are to me an object intensely desir- 
able — the air I breathe in a room empty of you is un- 
healthy. I am not the same to you — no — you can wait — 
you have a thousand activities — ^}^ou can be happy without 
me. Any party, any thing to fill up the day has been 
enough. How have you pass'd this month? Who have 
you smil'd with? All this may seem savage in me. You 
do not feel as I do — ^}'0u do not know what it is to love — 
one day you may — ^your time is not come. Ask yourself 
how many unhappy hours Keats has caused you in Loneli- 
ness. For myself I have been a Mart}T the whole time, 
and for this reason I speak; the confession is forc'd 
from me by the torture. I appeal to you by the blood of 
that Christ j^ou believe in : Do not write to me if you have 
done an}i;hing this month which it would have pained me 
to have seen. You may have altered — if j^ou have not — 
if you still behave in dancing rooms and other societies as 
I have seen you — I do not want to live — if you have done 
BO I wish this coming night may be my last. I cannot live 
without you, and not only you but chaste you; virtuous 
you. The Sun rises and sets, the day passes, and you fol- 
low the bent of your inclination to a certain extent — ^you 



JOHN KEATS 51 

have no conception of the quantity of miserable feeling 
that passes through me in a day. — Be serious ! Love is not 
a plaything — and again do not write unless you can do it 
with a crystal conscience. I would sooner die for want of 
you than 



Yours for ever 

J. Keats. 



Its Sequel 

I 

John Keats to Charles Armitage Brown 

Wentworth Place, Hampstead. 

Saturday, Sept. 28 [1820] 
Maria Crowther, 
Off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. 
My deae Beowx^ 

The time has not yet come for a pleasant letter from 
me. I have delayed writing to you from time to time, be- 
cause I felt how impossible it was to enliven you with one 
heartening hope of my recovery; this morning in bed the 
matter struck me in a different manner ; I thought I would 
write " while I was in some liking, " or I might become 
too ill to write at all; and then if the desire to have writ- 
ten should become strong it would be a great affliction to 
me. I have many more letters to write, and I bless my 
stars that I have begim, for time seems to press, — this may 
be my best opportunity. We are in a calm. I am easy 
enough this morning. If my spirits seem too low you may 
in some degree impute it to our having been at sea a fort- 
night without making any way. I was very disappointed 
at not meeting you at Bedhampton, and am very provoked 



52 BY-GONE LOVERS 

at the thought of you being at Chichester to-day.' I should 
have delighted in setting off for London for the sensation 
merely, — for what should I do there? I could not leave 
my lungs or stomach or other worse things behind me. I 
wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much — 
there is one I must mention and have done with it. Even 
if my body would recover of itself, this would prevent it. 
The very thing which I want to live most for will be a 
great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can 
help it ? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how 
can I bear it in my state? I dare say you will be able to 
guess on what subject I am harping — you know what was 
my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at 
your house. I wish for death every day and night to de- 
liver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, 
for death would destroy even those pains which are better 
than nothing. Land and sea, weakness and decline, are 
great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever. 
When the pang of this thought has passed through my 
mind, I may say the bitterness of death is passed. I often 
wish for you that you might flatter me with the best. I 
think without my mentioning it for my sake you would be 
a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You think 
she has many faults — but, for my sake, think she has not 
one. If there is anything you can do for her by word or 
deed I know you will do it. I am in a state at present 
in which woman merely as woman can have no more power 
over me than stocks and stones, and yet the difference of 
my sensations with respect to Miss Brawne and my sister 
is amazing. The one seems to absorb the other to a de- 

* Lord Houghton records that, "when Keats's ship was driven 
back into Portsmouth by stress of weather, Mr. Brown was 
staying in the neighbourhood within ten miles, when Keats landed 
and spent a day on shore." 



JOHN KEATS 53 

gree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister 
in America. The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is be- 
yond everything horrible — the sense of darkness coming 
over me — I eternally see her figure eternally vanishing. 
Some of the phrases she was in the habit of using during 
my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is 
there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a 
dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort 
of suffering. The receiving this letter is to be one of 
yours. I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather 
yours to me, more than that, as you deserve to escape, you 
will never be so unhappy as I am. I should think of — 
you in my last moments. I shall endeavour to write to 
Miss Brawne if possible to-day. A sudden stop to my life 
in the middle of one of these letters would be no bad 
thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever awhile. Though 
fatigued with a letter longer than any I have written for 
a long while, it would be better to go on for ever than 
awake to a sense of contrary winds. We expect to put into 
Portland Koads to-night. The captain, the crew, and the 
passengers, are all ill-tempered and weary. I shall write 
to Dilke. I feel as if I was closing my last letter to you. 
My dear Brown, 

Your affectionate friend, 
John Keats. 

II 

John Keats to Charles Armitage Brown 

Naples, 

1 November [1820]. 
My dear Brown^ 

Yesterday we were let out of Quarantine, during which 

my health suffered more from bad air and the stifled 



54 BY-GONE LOVERS 

cabin than it had done the whole voyage. The fresh air 
revived me a little, and I hope I am well enough this 
morning to write to you a short, calm letter; — if that can 
be called one, in which I am afraid to speak of what I 
would fainest dwell upon. As I have gone thus far into 
it, I must go on a little ; — perhaps it may relieve the load 
of WRETCHEDNESS which presses upon me. The per- 
suasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. I cannot 
q — ^ My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was 
in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to 
die — I cannot bear to leave her. God! God! God! 
Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her 
goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in 
my travelling cap scalds my head. My imagination is 
horribly vivid about her — I see her — I hear her. There is 
nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me 
from her a moment. This was the case when I was in 
England ; I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time 
that I was a prisoner at Hunt's and used to keep my 
eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good 
hope of seeing her again — Now ! — that I could be buried 
near where she lives ! I am afraid to write to her — to re- 
ceive a letter from her — to see her handwriting would 
break my heart — even to hear of her anyhow, to see her 
name written, would be more than I can bear. My dear 
Brown, what am I to do ? Where can I look for consola- 
tion or ease? If I had any chance of recovery, this pas- 
sion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my ill- 
ness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever 
has never ceased wearing me out. When you write to me, 

^ Brown makes the following note upon this passage: — 

" He could not go on with this sentence nor even write the 

word 'quit,' — as I suppose. The word wretchedness above, he 

himself wrote in large characters." 



JOHN KEATS 55 

which you will do immediately, write to Eome (poste 
restante) — if she is well and happy, put a mark thus + ; 

if 

Eemember me to all. I will endeavour to bear my 
miseries patiently. A person in my state of health should 
not have such miseries to bear. Write a short note to my 
sister, saying you have heard from me. Severn is very 
well. If I were in better health I would urge your com- 
ing to Eome. I fear there is no one can give me any 
comfort. Is there any news of George? 0, that some- 
thing fortunate had ever happened to me or my brothers ! 
— then I might hope, — but despair is forced upon me as a 
habit. My dear Brown, for my sake, be her advocate for 
ever. I cannot say a word about Naples; I do not feel at 
all concerned in the thousand novelties around me. I am 
afraid to write to her — I should like her to know that I 
do not forget her. Oh, Brown, I have coals of fire in 
my breast. It surprises me that the human heart is 
capable of containing and bearing so much misery. Was 
I born for this end? God bless her, and her mother, and 
my sister, and George, and his wife, and you, and all ! 
Your ever affectionate friend, 
John Keats. 

Thursday [2 November 1820]. — I was a day too early 
for the Courier. He sets out now. I have been more calm 
to-day, though in a half dread of not continuing so. I 
said nothing of my health ; I know nothing of it ; you will 
hear Severn's account, from [Haslam]. I must leave off. 
You bring my thoughts too near to Fanny. God bless 
you! 



56 BY-GONE LOVERS 

III 

JoJin Keats to Armitage Biown^ 

Eome, November 30, 1820. 
My dear Brown^ 

'Tis the most difficult thing in the world to me to write 
a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse 
on opening any book, — yet I am much better than I was 
in quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter the pro-ing 
and con-ing of anything interesting to me in England. I 
have an habitual feeling of my real life having passed, 
and that I am leading a posthumous existence. God 
knows how it would have been — but it appears to me — 
however, I will not speak of that subject. I must have 
been at Bedhampton nearly at the time you were writing 
to me from Chichester — how unfortunate — and to pass on 
the river too ! There was my star predominant ! I can- 
not answer anything in your letter, which followed me 
from Naples to Eome, because I am afraid to look it over 
again. I am so weak (in mind) that I cannot bear the 
sight of any handwriting of a friend I love so much as I 
do you. Yet I ride the little horse, and, at my worst, even 
in quarantine, summoned up more puns, in a sort of des- 
peration, in one week than in any year of my life. There 
is one thought enough to kill me ; I have been well, healthy, 
alert, etc., walking with her, and now — the knowledge of 
contrast, feeling for light and shade, all that information 
(primitive sense) necessary for a poem, are great enemies 
to the recovery of the stomach. There, you rogue, I put 
you to the torture ; but you must bring your philosophy to 
bear, as I do mine, really, or how should I be able to live? 
Dr. Clark is very attentive to me; he says there is very 

* This is believed to be the last letter that he wrote. 



JOSEPH SEVERN 57 

little the matter with my lungs^ but my stomach, he says, 
is very bad. I am well disappointed in hearing good news 
from George/ for it runs in my head we shall all die young. 
I have not written to Reynolds yet, which he must think 
very neglectful; being anxious to send him a good account 
of my health, I have delayed it from week to week. If I 
recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes 
made during sickness; and if I should not, all my faults 
will be forgiven. Severn is very well, though he leads so 
dull a life with me. Remember me to all friends, and 
tell Haslam I should not have left London without taking 
leave of him, but from being so low in body and mind. 
Write to George as soon as you receive this, and tell him 
how I am, as far as you can guess; and also a note to my 
sister — who walks about my imagination like a ghost — 
she is so like Tom.^ I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even 
in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. 

God bless you ! 

John Keats. 

IV 

Joseph Severn to Mrs. Brawne 

Rome, Dec. UtJi, 1820. 
My dear Madam, 

I fear poor Keats is at his worst. A most unlooked- 
for relapse has confined him to his bed, with every chance 
against him. It has been so sudden upon what I thought 
convalescence, and without any seeming cause, that I can- 
not calculate on the next change. I dread it, for his 

* George Keats lived until 1842, meantime making and losing 
a couple of fortunes. His sister, Frances Mary, or Fanny, be- 
came Mrs. Llanos and lived to be eighty-six, dying in 1889. 

'^ Thomas Keats, his youngest brother, who had died of con- 
sumption, Dec. 1, 1818. 



58 BY-GONE LOVERS 

suffering is so great, so continued, and his fortitude so 
completely gone, that any further change must make him 
delirious. This is the fifth day, and I see him get worse. 

December 17th, 4 a. m. — Not a moment can I be from 
him. I sit by his bed and read all day, and at night I 
humour him in all his wanderings. He has just fallen 
asleep, the first sleep for eight nights, and now from mere 
exhaustion. I hope he will not wake till I have written, 
for I am anxious that you should know the truth; yet I 
dare not let him see I think his state dangerous. On the 
morning of this attack he was going on in good spirits 
quite merrily, when, in an instant, a cough seized him, 
and he vomited two cupfuls of blood. In a moment I got 
Dr. Clark, who took eight ounces of blood from his arm — 
it was black and thick. Keats was much alarmed and 
dejected. What a sorrowful day I had with him! He 
rushed out of bed and said, " This day shall be my last ; '' 
and but for me most certainly it would. The blood broke 
forth in similar quantity the next morning, and he was 
bled again. I was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him 
into a little calmness, and he soon became quite patient. 
Now the blood has come up in coughing five times. Not 
a single thing will he digest, yet he keeps on craving for 
food. Every day he raves he will die of hunger, and I've 
been obliged to give him more than he was allowed. His 
imagination and memory present every thought to him in 
horror; the recollection of "his good friend Brown," of 
" his four happy weeks spent under lier care," of his sister 
and. brother. Oh! he will mourn over all to me whilst I 
cool his burning forehead, till I tremble for his intellect. 
How can he be " Keats " again after all this ? Yet I may 
see it too gloomily, since each coming night I sit up adds 
its dismal contents to my mind. 

Dr. Clark will not say much; although there are no 



WILLIAM HASLAM 59 

bounds to his attention, yet he can with little success " ad- 
minister to a mind diseased/' All that can be done he 
does most kindly, while his lady, like himself in refined 
feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for in this 
wilderness of a place, for an invalid, there was no alter- 
native. Yesterday Dr. Clark went all over Rome for a 
certain kind of fish, and just as I received it, carefully 
dressed, Keats was taken with spitting of blood. 

We have the best opinion of Dr. Clark's skill; he comes 
over four or five times a day, and he has left word for us 
to call him up, at any moment, in case of danger. My 
spirits have been quite pulled down. Those wretched 
Romans have no idea of comfort. I am obliged to do 
everything for him. I wish you were here. 

I have just looked at him. This will be good-night. 



William Haslam to Joseph Severn 

Greenwich, Uh December, 1820. 
My dear Severn, 

Your letter from shipboard' when under quarantine 
gave me an extent of anxiety such as my heart hath not 
known since I parted with Keats at Gravesend. It hung 
about me intensely for days, and at nights I dreamt of you, 
but I did not, could not, show it to a soul. I could not 
bring myself to give occasion to that grief to any man that 
the perusal had forced on me. Do not, however, mention 
in any of your letters home that I have acknowledged the 
receipt of a letter of that date, for altho' I should not 
forgive myself if I had shown it — still friends will not 
acquit one — for that I did not show it, — ^but hoped you 

* Severn had written to Haslam from the Maria CrowtheVy and 
had posted his letter on entering Naples. 



60 BY-GONE LOVERS 

would write, and you ought, Severn, to have written with- 
in three days again. Why have you not kept your diary? 
I ask you solemnly, for no one thing on earth can give 
such satisfaction at home as such minute detail as you set 
out with. If you have discontinued it, in God's name re- 
sume it, and send it regularly to me, only that, however, 
I may see fit to circulate it. I will zealously preserve each 
section (number each, or letter it, that I may do this un- 
erringly, and write on hanh post paper), so that you may 
possess the entire diary whenever you call upon me for it. 
Do This, Severn, tho' at some sacrifice of your inherent dis- 
like of order and of obligation to do a thing — do it, if but 
because I ask it. 

Your letter came to me but last Friday (to-day is Mon- 
day, and our mail goes out to-morrow) ; you will hardly 
think that the receipt of it relieved me, and yet, sorrow- 
ful as are its contents, it did, so deeply had the letter of 
which I have been speaking distressed me — "that Keats 
this morning made an Italian pun ; " these, Severn, are the 
things that do one's heart good. " Water parted from the 
sea," was another of them. But, the fact of the return 
of Keats's spitting of blood stands ! And yet I did not but 
expect the voyage would have the effect of inducing its 
return; the climate, however, will, I trust, avail him. 
Keep him quiet, get the winter through; an opening year 
in Italy will perfect everything. Ere this reaches you, I 
trust Doctor Clark will have confirmed the most sanguine 
hopes of his friends in England; and to you, my friend,, 
I hope he will have given what you stand much in need of 
— a confidence amounting to a faith. Study to gain this, 
Severn, for trust me, that much, very much with invalids 
depends upon the countenances of those about them. Omit 
no opportunities that present themselves to induce Keats 
to disburthern his mind to you. I know (tho' since he 



JOSEPH SEVERN 61 

left England it has come to my knowledge) that he had 
much upon it. Avoid speakijig of George to him. George 
is a scoundrel! but talk of his friends in England, of 
their love, their hopes of him. Keats must get himself 
well again, Severn, if but for us. I, for one, cannot 
afford to lose him. If I know what it is to love, I truly 
love John Keats. I sent your letter (the last) to Brown. 
Brown read it, with omissions and additions, next door, 
and returned it to me to-day. I send by this post a letter 
from Brown to Keats sent to me on Saturday before he saw 
the last-mentioned, also one from your sister Maria, who 
called and left it with me to-day. Your family, she tells 
me, are all well. Tom has several times called on me, and 
I understand your father has at last become tolerably 
reconciled. I continue miserably oppressed, I mean as 
regards my executorship; ^tis now near three o'clock that 
I am closing this for you. My wife and child are well, and 
I, at least in them, am happy. 

Your attached friend, 

Wm. Haslam. 

VI 

Joseph Severn to Mrs. Brawne 

Eome, 
Jan. 11th, 1821. 1 o'clock morning, 

(finished 3 a. m.) 
My dear Madam, 

I said that " the first good news I had should be for 
the kind Mrs. Brawne." I am thankful and delighted to 
make good my promise, to be able at all to do it, for amid 
all the horrors hovering over poor Keats this was the 
most dreadful — that I could see no possible way, and but 
a fallacious hope for his recovery ; but now, thank God, I 
have a real one. I most certainly think I shall bring him 



62 BY-GONE LOVERS 

back to England — at least my anxiety for his recovery and 
comfort made me think this — for half the cause of his 
danger had arisen for the loss of England, from the dread 
of never seeing it more. ! this hung upon him like a 
torture: never may I behold the sight again, even in my 
direst enemy. Little did I think what a task of affliction 
and danger I had undertaken, for I thought only of the 
beautiful mind of Keats, my attachment to him, and his 
convalescence. But I will tell you, dear madam, the sin- 
gular reasons I have for hoping for his recovery. In the 
first fortnight of this attack his memory presented to him 
everything that was dear and delightful, even to the 
minutia?, and with all the persecution, and I may say 
villainy, practised upon him — ^his exquisite sensibility for 
everyone, save his poor self, — all his own comfort ex- 
pended on others — almost in vain. These he would con- 
trast with his present suffering, and say that all was 
brought on by them, and he was right. Now he has 
changed to calmness and quietude, as singular as produc- 
tive of good, for his mind was most certainly killing him. 
He has now given up all thoughts, hopes, or even wish for 
recovery. His mind is in a state of peace from the final 
leave he has taken from this world ?Tid all its future 
hopes; this has been an immense weight for him to rise 
from. He remains quiet and submissive under his heavy 
fate. Now, if anything will recover him, it is this absence 
of himself. I have perceived for the last three days S3rmp- 
toms of recovery. Dr. Clark even thinks so. Nature 
again revives in him — I mean where art was used before; 
yesterday he permitted me to carry him from his bedroom 
to our sitting-room — to put clean things on him — and to 
talk about my painting to him. This is my good news — - 
don't think it otherwise, my dear madam, for I have been 
in such a state of anxiety and discomfiture in this barba- 



JOSEPH SEVERN 63 

rous place, that the least hope of my friend's recovery is a 
heaven to me. 

For three weeks I have never left him — I have sat up 
all night — I have read to him nearly all day, and even in 
the night — I light the fire— make his breakfast, and some- 
times am obliged to cook — make his bed, and even sweep 
the room. I can have these things done, but never at the 
time when they must and ought to be done — so that you 
will see my alternative; what enrages me most is making 
a fire — I blow — blow for an hour — the smoke comes fum- 
ing out — my kettle falls over on the burning sticks — no 
stove — Keats calling me to be with him — the fire catch- 
ing my hands and the door-bell ringing: all these to one 
quite unused and not at all capable — with the want of 
even proper material — come not a little galling. But to 
my great surprise I am not ill — or even restless — nor have 
I been all the time ; there is nothing but what I will do for 
him — there is no alternative but what I think and provide 
myself against — except his death — not the loss of him — 
I am prepared to bear that — but the inhumanity, the bar- 
barism of these Italians. So far I have kept everything 
from poor Keats ; but if he did know but part what I suf- 
fer from them and their cursed laws, it would kill him. 
Just to instance one thing among many. News was 
brought me the other day that our gentle landlady had 
reported to the police that my friend was dying of con- 
sumption. Now their law is — that every individual thing, 
even to the paper on the walls in each room the patient 
has been in, shall without reserve be destroyed by fire, the 
loss to be made good by his friends. This startled me not 
a little, for in our sitting-room where I wanted to bring 
him, there is property worth about £150, besides all our 
own books, etc. — invaluable. Now my difficulty was to 
shift him to this room, and let no one know it. This was a 



64 BY-GONE LOVERS 

heavy task from the unfortunate manner of the place; our 
landlady's apartments are on the same floor with ours — 
her servant waits on me when it pleases her, and enters 
from an adjoining room. 

I was determined on removing Keats, let what would be 
the consequence. The change was most essential to his 
health and spirits, and the following morning I set about 
accomplishing it. In the first place I blocked up their 
door so as they could not enter, then made a bed on the 
sofa, and removed my friend to it. The greatest difficulty 
was in keeping all from him; I succeeded in this too, by 
making his bed, and sweeping his room where it is — and 
going dinnerless with all the pretensions of dining, and 
persuading him that their servant had made his bed and I 
had been dining. He half suspected this, but as he could 
not tell the why and the wherefore, there it ended. I got 
him back in the afternoon, and no one save Dr. Clark 
knew about it. Dr. Clark still attends him with his usual 
kindness, and shows his good heart in everything he does; 
the like of his lady — I cannot tell which shows us the most 
kindness. I even am a mark of their care — mince-pies 
and numberless nice things come over to keep me alive. 
But for their kindness I am afraid we should go on very 
gloomily. Now, my dear madam, I must leave off — my 
eyes are beginning to be unruly, and I must write a most 
important letter to our president. Sir Thomas Lawrence, 
before I suffer myself to go to sleep. Will you be so kind 
as to write Mr. Taylor that it was at Messrs, Torlonias' 
advice Mr. Keats drew a bill for the whole sum £120? — 
this was to save the trouble and expense of many small 
bills, he now draws in small sums. I have the whole of his 
affairs under charge, and am trying the nearest possible 
way. Mr. Taylor will hear from Dr. Clark about the 
bill; it will be well arranged. 



JOSEPH SEVERN 65 

Present my respectful compliments to Miss Brawne, who 
I hope and trust is quite well. Now that I think of her, 
my mind is carried to your happy Wentworth Place, where 
all that peaceful English comfort seems to exist. ! I 
would my unfortunate friend had never left your Went- 
worth Place — for the hopeless advantages of this comfort- 
less Italy. He has many, many times talked over " the few 
happy days at your house, the only time when his mind 
was at ease." I hope still to see him with you again. 
Farewell, my dear madam. One more thing I must say — 
poor Keats cannot see any letters, at least he will not — 
they affect him so much and increase his danger. The two 
last I repented giving, he made me put them into his box 
— unread; more of these when I write again, meanwhile 
any matter of moment had better come to me. I will be 
very happy to receive advice and remembrance from you. 
Once more farewell. 

Your obedient and affectionate servant, 

Joseph Severn. 

3 o'clock morning. 
P.S. I have just looked at him— he is in a beautiful 
sleep; in look he is very much more like himself — I have 
the greatest [hope] of him 

VII 

Joseph Severn to Mrs. Brawne 

Rome, 
12th February, 1821. 
My dear Mrs. Brawne, — 

I have just received your letter of the 15th— the contrast 
of your quiet friendly Hampstead with this lonely place 
and our poor suffering Keats brings the tears into my eyes. 



66 BY-GONE LOVERS 

I wish many, many times that he had never left you. His 
recovery must have been impossible whilst he was in Eng- 
land, and his excessive grief since has made it more so. In 
your care he seems to me like an infant in its mother's 
arms — you would have smoothed down his pain by 
varieties, his death might have been eased by the sight of 
his many friends. But here, with one solitary friend, in 
a place else savage for an invalid he has had one more 
pang added to his many, for I have had the hardest task in 
keeping from him my painful situation. He had refused 
all food, but I tried him every way — I left him no excuse. 
Many times I have prepared his meals six times over, and 
kept from him the trouble I had in doing it. I have not 
been able to leave him; that is, I have not dared to, but 
when he slept. Had he come here alone he would have 
plunged into the grave in secret — we should never have 
known one syllable about him. This reflection alone re- 
pays me for all I have done. It is impossible to conceive 
what the sufferings of this poor fellow have been. Now 
he is still alive and calm. If I say more I shall say too 
much. Yet at times I have hoped he would recover, but 
the Doctor shook his head, and Keats would not hear that 
he was better — the thought of recovery is beyond every- 
thing dreadful to him. We now dare not perceive any 
improvement, for the hope of death seems his only comfort. 
He talks of the quiet grave as the first rest he can ever 
have. I can believe and feel this most truly. In the last 
week a great desire for books came across his mind. I 
got him all the books at hand and for three days this charm 
lasted on him, but now it is gone. Yet he is very calm — 
he is more and more reconciled to his fortunes. 

Feb. 14:th. — Little or no change has taken place in Keats 
since the commencement of this, except this beautiful one 
that his mind is growing to great quietness and peace — I 



JOSEPH SEVERN 67 

find this change has its rise from the increasing weakness 
of his body, but it seems like a delightful sleep to me. I 
have been beating about in the tempest of his mind so long. 
To-night he has talked very much to me, but so easily that 
he at last fell into a pleasant sleep — he seems to have com- 
fortable dreams without nightmare. This will bring on 
some change — it cannot be worse, it may be better. Among 
the many things he has requested of me to-night, this is 
the principal, that on his grave shall be this — 

•• Here lies one whose name was writ in water." 

You will understand this so well I will not say a word 
about it, but is it not dreadful that he should with all his 
misfortunes on his mind and perhaps wrought up to their 
abisme, end his life without one jot of human happiness? 
When he first came here he purchased a copy of Alfieri, 
but put it down at the second page — " Misera me ! '' He 
was much affected at this passage. 

** Misera me ! Sollievo a me non resta 
Altro ch '1 pianto, ed il pianto 6 delitto." 



VIII 

Joseph Severn to diaries Armitage Brown 

February, 1821. 
Poor Keats has just fallen asleep. I have watched him 
and read to him to his very last wink; he had been saying 
to me, " Severn, I can see under your quiet look immense 
contention — you don't know what you are reading. You 
are enduring for me more than I would have you. ! 
that my last hour was come ! " He is sinking daily ; per- 
haps another three weeks may lose him to me for ever. I 
was sure of his recovery when we set out. I was selfish, I 



68 BY-GONE LOVERS 

thought of his value to me ; I made my own public success 
to depend on his candour to me. Torlonia, the banker, has 
refused us any more money; the bill is returned unac- 
cepted, and to-morrow I must pay my last crown for this 
cursed lodging-place ; and, what is more, if he dies all the 
beds and furniture will be burnt and the walls scraped, and 
they will come on me for a hundred pounds or more. But, 
above all, this noble fellow lying on the bed and without the 
common spiritual comforts that many a rogue and fool has 
in his last moments ; if I do break down it will be under 
this; but I pray that some angel of goodness may yet lead 
him through this dark wilderness. If I could leave Keats 
every day for a time I could soon raise money by my paint- 
ing, but he will not let me out of his sight, he will not 
bear the face of a stranger. I would rather cut my tongue 
out than tell him I must get the money — that would kill 
him at a word. You see my hopes of being kept by the 
Eoyal Academy will be cut off unless I isend a picture by the 
spring. I have written to Sir T. Lawrence. I have got 
a volume of Jeremy Taylor's works, which Keats has heard 
me read to-night. This is a treasure indeed, and came 
when I should have thought it hopeless. Why may not 
other good things come? I will keep myself up with such 
hopes. Dr. Clark is still the same, though he knows about 
the bill; he is afraid the next change will be to diarrhoea. 
Keats sees all this — his knowledge of anatomy makes every 
change tenfold worse; every way he is unfortunate, yet 
every one offers me assistance on his account. He cannot 
read any letters, he has made me put them by him un- 
opened. They tear him to pieces — he dare not look on the 
outside any more; make this known. 



JOSEPH SEVERN 69 

IX 

Joseph Severn to William Haslam 

Feb. 22ndj 1821. 
My dear Haslam, — 

0, how anxious I am to hear from you ! I have nothing 
to break this dreadful solitude but letters. Day after day, 
night after night, here I am by our poor dying friend. 
My spirits, my intellect, and my health are breaking down. 
All run away, and even if they did not, Keats would not 
do without me. Last night I thought he was going, I 
could hear the phlegm in his throat ; he bade me lift him 
up on the bed or he would die with pain. I watched him 
all night, expecting him to be suffocated at every cough. 
This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in him 
frightened me; he has sunk in the last three days to a 
most ghastly look. Though Dr. Clark has prepared me for 
the worst, I shall be ill able to bear to be set free even 
from this, my horrible situation, by the loss of him. I am 
still quite precluded from painting, which may be of con- 
sequence to me. Poor Keats has me ever by him, and 
shadows out the form of one solitary friend ; he opens his 
eyes in great doubt and horror, but when they fall upon 
me they close gently, open quietly and close again, till he 
sinks to sleep. This thought alone would keep me by him 
till he dies ; and why did I say I was losing my time? The 
advantages I have gained by knowing John Keats are 
double and treble any I could have won by any other 
occupation. Farewell. 



70 BY-GONE LOVERS 

X 

Joseph Severn to Charles Armitage Brown 

February (?), 1821. 
My dear Brown, 

He is gone. He died with the most perfect ease. He 
seemed to go to sleep. On the 23d, Friday, at half-past 
four, the approach of death came on. " Severn — I — lift 
me up, for I am dying. I shall die easy. Don't be 
frightened! Thank God it has come." I lifted him up 
in my arms, and the phlegm seemed boiling in his throat. 
This increased until eleven at night, when he gradually 
sank into death, so quiet that I still thought he slept — 
but I cannot say more now. I am broken down beyond 
my strength. I cannot be left alone. I have not slept 
for nine days, I will say the days since On Satur- 
day a gentleman came to cast the face, hand, and foot. On 
Sunday his body was opened; the lungs were completely 
gone, the doctors could not conceive how he had lived in 
the last two months. Dr. Clark will write you on this 
head. . . . 

THE AFTEKMATH 
I 

The Letter which Came too Late ^ 

Leigh Hunt to Joseph Severn 

Vale of Health, Hampstead, March 8, 1821. 
Dear Severn, — 

You have concluded, of course, that I have sent no 
letters to Eome, because I was aware of the effect they 

^ Keats died in Rome on February 23, 1821. He was lying in 
his grave when Leigh Hunt penned this letter. 



LEIGH HUNT 71 

would have on Keats's mind; and this is the principal 
cause, — for besides what I have been told of his emotions 
about letters in Italy, I remember his telling me on one 
occasion that, in his sick moments, he never wished to 
receive another letter, or even to see another face however 
friendly. But I still should have written to you had I 
not been almost at death's door myself. You will imagine 
how ill I have been when you hear that I have just begun 
writing for the Examiner and Indicator, after an interval 
of several months, during which my flesh wasted from me 
in sickness and melancholy. Judge how often I thought 
of Keats, and with what feelings. Mr. Brown tells me 
he is comparatively calm now, or rather quite so. If he 
can bear to hear .of us, pray tell him — but he knows it all 
already, and can put it in better language than any man. I 
hear he does not like to be told that he may get better ; nor 
is it to be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion 
that he shall not recover. He can only regard it as a 
puerile thing, and an insinuation that he cannot bear to 
think he shaU die. But if this persuasion should happen 
no longer to be so strong upon him, or if he can now put up 
with such attempts to console him, remind him of what I 
have said a thousand times, and that I still (upon my 
honour, Severn) think always that I have seen too many 
instances of recovery from apparently desperate cases of 
consumption, not to indulge in hope to the very last. If 
he cannot bear this, tell him — tell that great poet and 
noble-hearted man — that we shall all bear his memory in 
the most precious part of our hearts, and that the world 
shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do. Or if this 
again will trouble his spirit, tell him we shall never cease 
to remember and love him, and that the most sceptical of 
us hath faith enough in the high things that nature put 
into our heads to think that all who are of one accord in 



72 BY-GONE LOVERS 

mind and heart are journeying to one and the same place^ 
and shall unite somehow or other again, face to face, 
mutually conscious, mutually delighted. Tell him he is 
only before us on the road, as he was in everything else ; or, 
whether you tell him the latter or no, tell him the former, 
and add that we shall never forget he was so, and that we 
are coming after him. The tears are again in my eyes, and 
I must not afford to shed them. The next letter I write 
shall be more to yourself, and a little more refreshing to 
your spirits, which we are very sensible must have been 
greatly taxed. But whether our friend dies or not, it will 
not be among the least lofty of our recollections by-and-by, 
that you helped to smooth the sick-bed of so fine a being. 
God bless you, dear Severn, 

Your sincere friend, 

Leigh Hunt. 

II 

The First Copy of the " Adonais " 

P. B. Shelley to Joseph Severn 

Dear Sir - ^'^^' Novemher 29, 182L 

I send you the elegy of poor Keats — and I wish it were 
better worth your acceptance. You will see, by the pref- 
ace, that it was written before I could obtain any particular 
account of his last moments ; all that I still know was com- 
municated to me by a friend who had derived his informa- 
tion from Colonel Finch ; I have ventured to express, as I 
felt, the respect and admiration which your conduct 
towards him demands. 

In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor 
ever will be, a popular poet; and the total neglect and ob- 
scurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still 



p. B. SHELLEY 73 

lie was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he 
may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least 
resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popularity. 

I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I send you 
will excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that a criti- 
cal notice of his writings would find a single reader. But 
for these considerations, it had been my intention to have 
collected the remnants of his compositions, and to have 
published them with a Life and Criticism. Has he left 
any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose 
possession are they? Perhaps you would oblige me by 
information on this point. 

Many thanks for the picture you promised me : I shall 
consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. For 
my part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my 
friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him.^ 

Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the 
pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance 
into something pleasant, begun under such melancholy 
auspices. 

Accept, my dear sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, 
and believe me. 

Your most sincere and faithful servant, 

Percy B. Shelley. 

^When, seven and a half months after the writing of this let- 
ter, Shelley's body was washed up on the beach of Viarreggio, 
there was found in his coat pocket a copy of Keats' last volume, 
"Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems," pub- 
lished 1820. Before setting sail he had visited Pisa in the com- 
pany of Leigh Hunt who, at his departure, had given to him this 
book to read on the voyage, saying, " Keep it until you can give 
it back to me with your own hand." The page was turned down 
at The Eve of St. Agnes as if, in mid act of reading, some danger 
of the sea had threatened and the book had been thrust hastily 
away. 



74 BY-GONE LOVERS 

Mazzini is Beloved by a Jewish Lady 

Jane Welsh Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle 

Chelsea, Thursday, September 18, 1845. 
My Dear, ... I have got quite over the fatigues of 
my journey, which had been most provokingly aggravated 
for me by a circumstance " which it may be interesting not 
to state " ; the last two nights I have slept quite as well as 
I was doing at Seaforth. The retirement of Cheyne Eow 
is as deep at present as anyone not absolutely a Timon of 
Athens could desire. "There is, in the first place" (as 
Mr. Paulet would say), the physical impossibility (hardly 
anybody being left in town) , and then the weather has been 
so tempestuous that nobody in his senses (except Mazzini, 
who never reflects whether it be raining or no) would come 
out to make visits. He (Mazzini) came the day before 
yesterday, immediately on receiving notification of my 
advent, and his doe-skin boots were oozing out water in a 
manner frightful to behold. He looked much as I left 
him, and appeared to have made no progress of a practical 
sort. He told me nothing worth recording, except that he 
had received the other day a declaration of love. And this 
he told with the same calma and historical precision with 
which you might have said you had received an invitation 
to take the chair at a Mechanics' Institute dinner. Of 
course I asked " the particulars." " Why not? " and I got 
them fully, at the same time with brevity, and without a 
smile. Since the assassination affair, he had received many 
invitations to the house of a Jew merchant of Italian 
extraction, where there are several daughters — " what shall 
I say?- — ^horribly ugly: that is, repugnant for me entirely." 
One of them is " nevertheless very strong in music," and 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE 75 

seeing that he admired her playing, she had " in her head 
confounded the playing with the player." 

The last of the only two times he had availed himself of 
their attentions, as they sat at supper with Browning and 
some others, " the youngest of the horrible family " pro- 
posed to him, in sotto voce, that they two should drink " a 
goblet of wine " together, each to the person that each loved 
most in the world. 

" I find your toast unegoist/' said he, " and I accept it 
with pleasure." " But," said she, " when we have drunk, 
we will then tell each other to whom?" "Excuse me," 
said he, " we will, if you please, drink without conditions." 
Whereupon they drank; "and then this girl— what shall I 
say ? bold, upon my honour— proposed to tell me to whom 
she had drunk, and trust to my telling her after. ' As you 
like.' ' Well, then, it was to you ! ' ' Eeally ? ' said I, sur- 
prised I must confess. 'Yes,' said she, pointing aloft, 
' true as God exists.' ' Well,' said I, ' I find it strange.' 
'Now, then,' said she, 'to whom did you drink?' 'Ah!' 
said I, ' that is another question ; ' and on this, that girl 
became ghastly pale, so that her sister called out, ' Nina ! 
what is the matter with you ? ' and now, thank God, she has 
sailed to Aberdeen." Did you ever hear anything so dis- 
tracted? enough to make one ask if E has not some 

grounds for his extraordinary ideas of English women. 

Deceived in Her Birthday Letter 

Jane Welsh Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle 

Seaforth House, Tuesday, July 14, 1846. 
Oh, my dear husband. Fortune has played me such a 
cruel trick this day ! But it is all right now; and I do not 
even feel any resentment against Fortune for the suffo- 



76 . BY-GONE LOVERS 

eating misery of the last two hours. I know always, even 
when I seem to you most exacting, that whatever happens 
to me is nothing like so bad as I deserve. But you shall 
hear all how it was. 

Yesterday, in coming back from the post-office, where I 
had gone myself with the letter to you, my head took to 
aching, and ached, ached on all day in a bearable sort of 
fashion, till the evening, when Geraldine came over from 
Manchester, and the sudden bound my heart gave at the 
sight of her finished me off on the spot. I had to get 
myself put to bed, and made a bad wakeful night of it; so 
that this morning I was nervous, as you may figure, and 
despairing of all things, even of the letter from you that I 
expected so confidently yesterday. Encouragement came, 
however, from a quarter I was little dreaming of — before 
the post time, before I was dressed, in fact — Heaven knows 
how she had managed it — there was delivered to me a 
packet from — Bolte, at Cambridge — a pretty little collar 
and cuffs of the poor thing's own work, with the kindest 
letter, after all my cruelty to her ! Well, I thought, if she 
can be so loving and forgiving for me, I need not be tor- 
menting myself with the fear that he will not write to-day 
either, and I put on the collar there and then, and went 
down to breakfast in a little better heart. 

At ten, the post hour, I slipped away myself to the post 
office, but was detected by Betsy and Geraldine, who in- 
sisted on putting on their bonnets and accompanying me. 
I could well have dispensed with the attention; however, I 
trusted there would be a letter, and their presence would 
only hinder me reading it for a little. And two were 
handed out which I stretched out my hand to receive. Both 
for Betsy ! None for me, the postmistress averred ! 

Not a line from you on my birthday — on the fifth day ! 
I did not burst out crying — did not faint — did not do any- 



JANE WELSH CARLYLE 77 

thing absurd, so far as I know; but I walked back again 
without speaking a word, and with such a tumult of 
wretchedness in my heart as you, who know me, can con- 
ceive. And then I shut myself in my room to fancy every- 
thing that was most tormenting. Were you finally so out 
of patience with me that you had resolved to write me no 
more at all? Had you gone to Addiscombe and found no 
leisure there to remember my existence? Were you taken 
ill, so ill that you could not write? That last idea made 
me mad to get off to the railway and back to London. 
Oh, mercy ! what a two hours I had of it ! And just when 
I was at my wits' end, I heard Julia crying out through 
the house, "Mrs. Carlyle, Mrs. Carlyle! are you there? 
Here is a letter for you ! " And so there was, after all. 
The postmistress had overlooked it, and given it to Eobert 
when he went afterwards, not knowing that we had been. 
I wonder what love letter was ever received with such 
thankfulness ! Oh, my dear, I am not fit for living in the 
world with this organisation. I am as much broken to 
pieces by that little accident as if I had come through an 
attack of cholera or typhus fever. I cannot even steady 
my hand to write decently. But I felt an irresistible need 
of thanking you by return of post. Yes, I have kissed the 
dear little card-case. And now I will lie down a while and 
try to get some sleep, at least to quiet myself. I will try 
to believe— oh, why cannot I believe it once for all— that 
with all my faults and follies, I am " dearer to you than 
any earthly creature!" I will be better for Geraldine 
here; she is become very quiet and nice, and as affectionate 

for me as ever. 

Your own 

Jane Carlyle. 



78 BY-GONE LOVERS 

Learning to Love 

Charlotte Bronte to Ellen Nussey * 



December 15th, 1852. 

I inclose another note which, taken in conjunction with 
the incident immediately preceding it, and with a long 
series of indications whose meaning I scarce ventured 
hitherto to interpret to myself, much less hint to any other, 
has left on my mind a feeling of deep concern. This note 
you will see is from Mr. Nicholls." 

I know not whether you have ever observed him 
specially when staying here. Your perception is generally 
quick enough — too quick, I have sometimes thought; yet 
as you never said anything, I restrained my own dim mis- 
givings, which could not claim the sure guide of vision. 
What papa has seen or guessed I will not inquire, though 
I may conjecture. He has minutely noticed all Mr. 
Nicholls's low spirits, all his threats of expatriation, all his 
symptoms of impaired health — noticed them with little 

^ Charlotte Bronte's most intimate friend. 

* The Rev. Arthur Bell Nicholls was born in County Antrim, in 
1817, of parents who were Scotch on both sides. His first curacy 
was Ha worth, of which Charlotte Bronte's father was incumbent; 
hither he came in 1844. He is the Mr. Macarthey of Shirley. 
His was the fourth proposal of marriage which Charlotte Bronte 
received. Her first was from Henry Nussey, 1839. Her second 
from Mr. Price, 1839. Her third from James Taylor, the second 
in command to Mr. W. S. Williams as adviser to the firm of 
Smith Elder, 1851. After much difficulty the proposal of Mr. 
Nicholls was accepted, and the marriage took place June 29, 
1854. March 31, 1855, Charlotte Bronte died. Mr. Nicholls re- 
mained at Haworth for the six years following his wife's death. 
On the death of Mr. Bronte (1777-1861), Charlotte Bronte's 
father, he returned to Ireland and, some years later, married 
again — a cousin, by name Miss Bell. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 79 

sympathy and much indirect sarcasm. On Monday even- 
ing Mr. Nicholls was here to tea. I vaguely felt without 
clearly seeing, as without seeing I have felt for some time, 
the meaning of his constant looks, and strange, feverish 
restraint. After tea I withdrew to the dining-room as 
usual. As usual, Mr. Nicholls sat with papa till between 
eight and nine o'clock; I then heard him open the parlour 
door as if going. I expected the clash of the front door. 
He stopped in the passage; he tapped; like lightning it 
flashed on me what was coming. He entered; he stood 
before me. What his words were you can guess ; his man- 
ner you can hardly realise, nor can I forget it. Shaking 
from head to foot, looking deadly pale, speaking low, 
vehemently, yet with difficulty, he made me for the first 
time feel what it costs a man to declare affection where he 
doubts response. 

The spectacle of one ordinarily so statue-like thus 
trembling, stirred, and overcome, gave me a kind of strange 
shock. He spoke of sufferings he had borne for months, of 
sufferings he could endure no longer, and craved leave for 
some hope. I could only entreat him to leave me then and 
promise a reply on the morrow. I asked him if he had 
spoken to papa. He said he dared not. I think I half 
led, half put him out of the room. When he was gone I 
immediately went to papa, and told him what had taken 
place. Agitation and anger disproportionate to the oc- 
casion ensued ; if I had loved Mr. Nicholls, and had heard 
such epithets applied to him as were used, it would have 
transported me past my patience; as it was, my blood 
boiled with a sense of injustice. But papa worked himself 
into a state not to be trifled with : the veins on his temples 
started up like whip-cord, and his eyes became suddenly 
bloodshot. I made haste to promise that Mr. Nicholls 
should on the morrow have a distinct refusal. 



80 BY-GONE LOVERS 

I wrote yesterday and got this note. There is no need 
to add to this statement any comment. Papa's vehement 
antipathy to the bare thought of any one thinking of me as 
a wife, and Mr. Nicholls's distress, both give me pain. 
Attachment to Mr. Nicholls you are aware I never enter- 
tained, but the poignant pity inspired by his state on Mon- 
day evening, by the hurried revelation of his sufferings for 
many months, is something galling and irksome. That he 
cared something for me, and wanted me to care for him, I 
have long suspected, but I did not know the degree or 
strength of his feelings. Dear Nell, good-bye. — Yours 
faithfully, C. Bronte. 

II 

April 6th, 1853. 
You ask about Mr. Nicholls. I hear he has got a curacy, 
but do not know yet where. I trust the news is true. He 
and papa never speak. He seems to pass a desolate life. 
He has allowed late circumstances so to act on him as to 
freeze up his manner and overcast his countenance not only 
to those immediately concerned but to every one. He sits 
drearily in his rooms. If Mr. Grant or any other clergy- 
man calls to see, and as they think, to cheer him, he 
scarcely speaks. I find he tells them nothing, seeks no con- 
fidant, rebuffs all attempts to penetrate his mind. I own 
I respect him for this. He still lets Flossy go to his rooms, 
and takes him to walk. He still goes over to see Mr. Sow- 
den sometimes, and, poor fellow, that is all. He looks ill 
and miserable. I think and trust in Heaven that he will 
be better as soon as he fairly gets away from Haworth. I 
pity him inexpressibly. We never meet nor speak, nor dare 
I look at him; silent pity is just all that I can give him, 
and as he knows nothing about that, it does not comfort. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 81 

III 

May 27th, 1853. 

As to the last Sunday, it was a cruel struggle. 'Mr. 
Nicholls ought not to have had to take any duty. 

He left Haworth this morning at six o'clock. Yesterday 
evening he called to render into papa's hands the deeds of 
the National School, and to say good-bye. They were busy 
cleaning — washing the paint, etc., in the dining-room, so 
he did not find me there. I would not go into the parlour 
to speak to him in papa's presence. He went out, thinking 
he was not to see me ; and indeed, till the very last moment, 
I thought it best not. But perceiving that he stayed long 
before going out at the gate, and remembering his long 
grief, I took courage and went out, trembling and mis- 
erable. I found him leaning against the garden door in a 
paroxysm of anguish, sobbing as women never sob. Of 
course I went straight to him. Very few words were inter- 
changed, those few barely articulate. Several things I 
should have liked to ask him were swept entirely from my 
memory. Poor fellow! But he wanted such hope and 
such encouragement as I could not give him. Still, I trust 
he must know now that I am not cruelly blind and indif- 
ferent to his constancy and grief. For a few weeks he goes 
to the south of England, afterwards he takes a curacy some- 
where in Yorkshire, but I don't know where. 

Papa has been far from strong lately. I dare not men- 
tion Mr. Nicholls's name to him. He speaks of him 
quietly and without opprobrium to others, but to me he is 
implacable on the matter. However, he is gone — gone, 
and there's an end of it. I see no chance of hearing a word 
about him in future, unless some stray shred of intelli- 
gence comes through Mr. Sowden or some other second- 
hand source. In all this it is not I who am to be pitied at 



82 BY-GONE LOVERS 

all, and of course nobody pities me. They all think in 
Haworth that I have disdainfully refused him. If pity 
would do Mr. Nicholls any good, he ought to have, and I 
believe has it. They may abuse me if they will; whether 
they do or not I can't tell. 

IV 

Haworth, April 11th, 1854. 

Mr. Nicholls came on Monday, and was here all last 
week. Matters have progressed thus since July. He re- 
newed his visit in September, but then matters so fell out 
that I saw little of him. He continued to write. The 
correspondence pressed on my mind. I grew very miser- 
able in keeping it from papa. At last sheer pain made me 
gather courage to break it. I told all. It was very hard 
and rough work at the time, but the issue after a few days 
was that I obtained leave to continue the communication. 
Mr. Nicholls came in January; he was ten days in the 
neighbourhood. I saw much of him. I had stipulated 
with papa for opportunity to become better acquainted. I 
had it, and all I learnt inclined me to esteem and affection. 
Still papa was very, very hostile, bitterly unjust. 

I told Mr. Nicholls the great obstacle that lay in his way. 
He has persevered. The result of this, his last visit, is, 
that papa's consent is gained, that his respect, I believe, is 
won, for Mr. Nicholls has in all things proved himself dis- 
interested and forbearing. Certainly, I must respect him, 
nor can I withhold from him more than mere cool respect. 
In fact, dear Ellen, I am engaged. 

Mr. Nicholls, in the course of a few months, will return 
to the curacy of Haworth. I stipulated that I would not 
leave papa; and to papa himself I proposed a plan of resi- 
dence which should maintain his seclusion and convenience 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 83 

uninvaded, and in a pecuniary sense bring him gain instead 
of loss. What seemed at one time impossible is now ar- 
ranged, and papa begins really to take a pleasure in the 
prospect. 

For myself, dear Ellen, while thankful to One who seems 
to have guided me through much difficulty, much and deep 
distress and perplexity of mind, I am still very calm, very 
inexpectant. What I taste of happiness is of the soberest 
order. I trust to love my husband, I am grateful for his 
tender love to me. I believe him to be an affectionate, a 
conscientious, a high-principled man; and if, with all this, 
I should yield to regrets that fine talents, congenial tastes 
and thoughts are not added, it seems to me I should be 
most presumptuous and thankless. 

Providence offers me this destiny. Doubtless, then, it 
is the best for me. Nor do I shrink from wishing those 
dear to me one not less happy. 

It is possible that our marriage may take place in the 
course of the summer. Mr. Mcholls wishes it to be in 
July. He spoke of you with great kindness, and said he 
hoped you would be at our wedding. I said I thought of 
having no other bridesmaid. Did I say rightly? I mean 
tlie marriage to be literally as quiet as possible. 

Do not mention these things just yet. I mean to write 
to Miss Wooler shortly. Good-bye. There is a strange 
half-sad feeling in making these announcements. The 
whole thing is something other than imagination paints it 
beforehand; cares, fears, come mixed inextricably with 
hopes. I trust yet to talk the matter over with you. Often 
last week I wished for your presence and said so to Mr. 
Nicholls — Arthur, as I now call him, but he said it was 
the only time and place when he could not have wished to 
see you. Good-bye. — Yours affectionately, 

C. Bronte. 



84 BY-GONE LOVERS 

V 

August dtJi, 1854. 

Since I came home I have not had an unemployed 
moment. My life is changed indeed: to be wanted con- 
tinually, to be constantly called for and occupied seems so 
strange; yet it is a marvellously good thing. As yet I 
don't quite understand how some wives grow so selfish. 
As far as my experience of matrimony goes, I think it 
tends to draw you out of, and away from yourself. . . . 

Dear Nell, during the last fiix weeks, the colour of my 
thoughts is a good deal changed : I know more of the reali- 
ties of life than I once did. I think many false ideas are 
propagated, perhaps unintentionally. I think those mar- 
ried women who indiscriminately urge their acquaintance 
to marry, much to blame. For my part, I can only say 
with deeper sincerity and fuller significance what I always 
said in theory, " Wait God's will." Indeed, indeed, Nell, 
it is a solemn and strange and perilous thing for a woman 
to become a wife. Man's lot is far, far different. Tell me 
when you think you can come. Papa is better, but not 
well. How is your mother? give my love to her. — ^Yours 
faithfully, 

C. B. NiCHOLLS. 

Defending Her Union with Mr. George H. Lewes 

George Eliot to Mrs. Bray 

September 4, 1855. 
If there is any one action or relation of my life which 
is, and always has been, profoundly serious, it is my rela- 
tion to Mr. Lewes. It is, however, natural enough that 
you should mistake me in many ways, for not only are you 
unacquainted with Mr. Lewes' real character and the course 



GEORGE ELIOT 85 

of his actions, but also it is several years now since you and 
I were much together, and it is possible that the modifica- 
tions my mind has undergone may be quite in the opposite 
direction of what you imagine. No one can be better aware 
than yourself that it is possible for two people to hold dif- 
ferent opinions on momentous subjects with equal sin- 
cerity, and an equally earnest conviction that their re- 
spective opinions are alone the truly moral ones. If we 
differ on the subject of the marriage laws, I at least, can 
believe of you that you cleave to what you believe to be 
good; and I don't know of anything in the nature of your 
views that should prevent you from believing the same of 
me. How far we differ, I think we neither of us know, 
for I am ignorant of your precise views; and apparently 
you attribute to me both feelings and opinions which are 
not mine. We cannot set each other quite right in this 
matter in letters, but one thing I can tell you in a few 
words. Light and easily-broken ties are what I neither 
desire theoretically, nor could live for practically. Women 
who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done. 
That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person, who is suffi- 
ciently acquainted with the realities of life can pronounce 
my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only under- 
stand by remembering how subtle and complex are the in- 
fluences that mould opinion. But I do remember this: 
and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable thoughts 
about those who condemn us, even though we might have 
expected a somewhat different verdict. From the majority 
of persons, of course, we never looked for an3^thing but 
condemnation. We are leading no life of self-indulgence, 
except indeed, that, being happy in each other, we find 
everything easy. We are working hard to provide for 
others better than we provide for ourselves, and to fulfil 
every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity and pride 



86 BY-GONE LOVERS 

would not be a sufficient basis for that. Pardon me if, in 
vindicating myself from some unjust conclusions, I seem 
too cold and self-asserting. I should not care to vindi- 
cate myself if I did not love you, and desire to relieve you 
of the pain which you say these conclusions have given 
you. Whatever I may have misinterpreted before, I do not 
misinterpret your letter this morning, but read in it noth- 
ing else than love and kindness towards me, to which my 
heart fully answers yes. I should like never to write 
about myself again; it is not healthy to dwell on one's 
own feelings and conduct, but only to try and live more 
faithfully and lovingly every fresh day. I think not one 
of the endless words and deeds of kindness and forbear- 
ance you have ever shown me has vanished from my mem- 
ory. I recall them often, and feel, as about everything 
else in the past, how deficient I have been in almost every 
relation of my life. But that deficiency is irrevocable, 
and I can find no strength or comfort, except in " pressing 
forward towards the things that are before," and trying 
to make the present better than the past. But if we 
should never be very near each other again, dear Cara, 
do bear this faith in your mind, that I was not insensible 
or ungrateful to all your goodness, and that I am one 
amongst the many for whom you have not lived in vain. 
I am very busy just now, and have been obliged to write 
hastily. Bear this in mind, and believe that no meaning is 
mine which contradicts my assurance that I am your 
affectionate and earnest friend. 



II 

Landscapes 



Dutch landscape with figures in the foreground. 

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) 

A curious place. 

Rolert Southey (1774-184$) 

The Coliseum. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

Ascending Vesuvius. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

Dome beyond dome, palaces and colonnades. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

"Good God, my dear fellow, have we lived to see this!" 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 

In Luther's country. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 

He buys a Constable. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 



Dutch Landscape with Figures in the Foreground 

Oliver Goldsmith to his Uncle Contarine 

Leyden [1754]. 
Dear Sir — I suppose by this time I am accused of 
either neglect or ingratitude, and my silence imputed 
to my usual slowness of writing. But believe me, Sir, 
when I say, that till now I had not an opportunity 
of sitting down with that ease of mind which writ- 
ing required. You may see by the top of the letter that 
I am at Leyden; but of my journey hither you must be 
informed. Some time after the receipt of your last, I em- 
barked for Bordeaux, on board a Scotch ship called the 
St. Andrews, Capt. John Wall, master. The ship made 
a tolerable appearance, and as another inducement, I was 
let to know that six agreeable passengers were to be my 
company. Well, we were but two days at sea when a storm 
drove us into a city of England called Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
We all went ashore to refresh us after the fatigue of our 
voyage. Seven men and I were one day on shore and on 
the following evening as we were all very merry, the room 
door bursts open: enters a sergeant and twelve grenadiers 
with their bayonets screwed and puts all under king's 
arrest. It seems my company were Scotchmen in the 
French service, and had been in Scotland to enlist soldiers 
for the French army. I endeavoured all I could to prove 
my innocence ; however, I remained in prison with the rest 
a fortnight, and with difficulty got off even then. Dear 
Sir, keep this all a secret, or at least say it was for debt; 



90 LANDSCAPES 

for if it were once known at the University, I should hardly 
get a degree. But hear how Providence interposed in my 
favour ; the ship was gone on to Bordeaux before I got from 
prison, and was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, 
and every one of the crew were drowned. It happened 
the last great storm. There was a ship at that time ready 
for Holland. I embarked, and in nine days, thank my 
God, I arrived safe at Kotterdam; whence I travelled by 
land to Leyden; and whence I now write. 

You may expect some account of this country, and 
though I am not well qualified for such an undertaking, 
yet shall I endeavour to satisfy some part of your expecta- 
tions. Nothing surprises me more than the books every 
day published, descriptive of the manners of this country. 
Any young man who takes it into his head to publish his 
travels, visits the countries he intends to describe; passes 
through them with as much inattention as his valet de 
cliambre; and consequently not having a fund himself to 
fill a volume, he applies to those who wrote before him, and 
gives us the manners of a country, not as he must have 
seen them, but such as they might have been fifty years 
before. The modern Dutclmaan is quite a different crea- 
ture from him of former times; he in everything imitates 
a Frenchman, but in his easy disengaged air, which is the 
result of keeping polite company. The Dutchman is vastly 
ceremonious, and is perhaps exactly what a Frenchman 
might have been in the reign of Louis XIV. Such are the 
better bred. But the downright Hollander is one of the 
oddest figures in nature. Upon a head of lank hair he 
wears a half-cocked narrow hat laced with black ribbon: 
no coat, but seven waistcoats, and nine pairs of breeches; 
so that his hips reach almost up to his arm-pits. This well- 
clothed vegetable is now fit to see company, or make love. 
But what a pleasing creature is the object of his appetite? 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 91 

Why, she wears a large fur cap with a deal of Flanders 
lace : for every pair of breeches he carries, she puts on two 
petticoats. 

A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic ad- 
mirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman 
carries in her hand a stove with cones in it, which, when 
she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chim- 
ney dozing Strephon lights his pipe. 

I take it that this continual smoking is what gives the 
man the ruddy healthful complexion, by drawing his su- 
perfluous moisture, while the woman, deprived of this 
amusement, overflows with such viscidities as tint the com- 
plexion, and give that paleness of visage which low fenny 
grounds and moist air conspire to cause. A Dutch woman 
and Scotch will well bear an opposition. 

The one pale and fat, the other lean and ruddy: the 
one walks as if she were straddling after a go-cart, and 
the other takes too masculine a stride. I shall not en- 
deavour to deprive either country of its share of beauty; 
but must say, that of all objects on earth, an English 
farmer's daughter is most charming. Every woman there 
is a complete beauty, while the higher class of women 
want many of the requisites to make them even tolerable. 
Their pleasures here are very dull, though very various. 
You may smoke, you may doze ; you may go to the Italian 
Comedy, as good an amusement as either of the former. 
This entertainment always brings in Harlequin, who is 
generally a magician and in consequence of his diabolical 
art performs a thousand tricks on the credulity of the 
persons of the Drama, who are all fools. I have seen the 
pit in a roar of laughter at this humour, when with his 
sword he touches the glass from which another was drink- 
ing. It was not his face they laughed at, for that was 
masked. They must have seen something vastly queer in 



92 LANDSCAPES 

the wooden sword, that neither I, nor you, Sir, were you 
there, could see. 

In winter, when their canals are frozen, every house is 
forsaken, and all people are on the ice; sleds drawn hy 
horses, and skating, are at that time the reigning amuse- 
ments. 

They have boats here that slide on the ice, and are 
driven by the winds. When they spread all their sails 
they go more than a mile and a half a minute, and their 
motion is so rapid the eye can hardly accompany them. 
Their ordinary manner of travelling is very cheap and 
very convenient; they sail in covered boats drawn by 
horses; and in these you are sure to meet people of all 
nations. Here the Dutch slumber, the French chatter, 
and the English play at cards. Any man who likes com- 
pany may have them to his taste. For my part I generally 
detached myself from all society, and was wholly taken 
up in observing the face of the country. Nothing can 
equal its beauty; wherever I turn my eye, fine houses, ele- 
gant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas, presented themselves ; 
but when you enter their towns you are charmed beyond 
description. No misery is to be seen here; every one is 
usefully employed. 

Scotland and this country bear the highest contrast. 
There hills and rocks intercept every prospect: here 'tis 
all continued plain. There you might see a well dressed 
duchess issuing from a dirty close; and here a dirty 
Dutchman inhabiting a palace. The Scotch may be com- 
pared to a tulip planted in dung ; but I never see a Dutch- 
man in his house but I think of a magnificent Egyptian 
temple dedicated to an ox. Physic is by no means taught 
here so well as in Edinburgh; and in all Leyden there are 
but four British students, owing to all necessaries being 
so extremely dear, and the professors so very lazy (th§ 



ROBERT SOUTHEY 9B 

chemical professor excepted,) that we don't much care to 
come hither. I am not certain how long my stay here may 
be ; however I expect to have the happiness of seeing you at 
Kilmore, if I can, next March. 

Direct to me, if I am honoured with a letter from you, 
to Madame Diallion's at Leyden. 

Thou best of men, may Heaven guard and preserve 
you, and those you love. 

Oliver Goldsmith. 



A Curious Place 

Robert Soutliey to Joseph Cottle 

Lisbon, February 1, 1796. 

The city is a curious place; a straggling plan; built on 
the most uneven ground, with heaps of ruins in the middle 
and large open places. The streets filthy beyond all Eng- 
lish ideas of filth, for they throw everything into the 
streets, and nothing is removed. Dead animals annoy you 
at every corner ; and such is the indolence and nastiness of 
the Portuguese, that I verily believe they would let each 
other rot, in the same manner, if the priests did not get 
something by burying them. Some of the friars are avowed 
to wear their clothes without changing for a year; and 
this is a comfort to them : you will not wonder, therefore, 
that I always keep to the windward of these reverend 
perfumers. 

The streets are very agreeable in wet weather. If you 
walk under the houses, jou are drenched by the water- 
spouts. If you attempt the middle, there is a river. If 
you would go between both, there is the dunghill. The 
rains here are very violent, and the streams in the streets, 
on a declivity, so rapid as to throw down men; and some- 



94 LANDSCAPES 

times to overset carriages. A woman was drowned some 
years ago in one of the most frequented streets of Lisbon. 

To-night I shall see the procession of " Our Lord of 
the Passion." This image is a very celebrated one, and 
with great reason, for one night he knocked at the door of 
St. Eoque's church, and there they would not admit him. 
After this he walked to the other end of the town, to the 
church of St. Grace, and there they took him in; but a 
dispute now arose between the two churches, to which the 
image belonged; whether to the church which he first 
chose, or the church that first chose him. The matter was 
compromised. One church has him, and the other fetches 
him for their processions, and he sleeps with the latter the 
night preceding. The better mode for deciding it had 
been to take the gentleman between both, and let him walk 
to which he liked best. What think you of this story being 
believed in 1796 ! ! ! 

The power of the Inquisition still exists, though they 
never exercise it, and thus the Jews save their bacon. 
Fifty years ago it was the greatest delight of the Portu- 
guese to see a Jew burnt. Geddes, the then chaplain, was 
present at one of these detestable Autos da Fe. He says, 
" The transports expressed by all ages, and all sexes, whilst 
the miserable sufferers were shrieking and begging mercy 
for God's sake, formed a scene more horrible than any 
out of hell!" He adds, that "this barbarity is not 
their national character, for no people sympathize so much 
at the execution of a criminal; but it is the damnable 
nature of their religion, and the most diabolical spirit of 
their priests ; their celibacy deprives them of the affections 
of men, and their creed gives them the ferocity of devils." 
Geddes saw one man gagged, because immediately he came 
out of the Inquisition gates, he looked up at the sun, 
whose light for many years had never visited him, and ex- 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 95 

claimed. "How is it possible for men who behold that 
glorious orb, to worship any being but him who created 
it ! " My blood runs cold when I pass that accursed build- 
ing; and though they do not exercise their power, it is a 
reproach to human nature that the building should exist. 

It is as warm here as in May with you; of course we 
broil in that month at Lisbon; but I shall escape the hot 
weather here, as I did the cold weather of England, and 
quit this place the latter end of April. You will, of course, 
see me the third day after my landing at Falmouth, or, 
if I can get companions in a post-chaise, sooner. This my 
resolution is like the law of the Medes and Persians, that 
altereth not. Be so good as to procure for me a set of 
Coleridge's Watchman, with his Lectures and Poems. I 
want to write a Tragedy here, but can find no leisure to 
begin with. 

Portugal is much plagued with robbers, and they gen- 
erally strip a man, and leave him to walk home in his 
birthday suit. An Englishman was served thus at Al- 
meyda, and the Lisbon magistrates, on his complaint, took 
up the whole village, and imprisoned them all. Contem- 
plate this people in what light you will, you can never 
see them in a good one. They suffered their best epic Poet 
to perish for want; and they burned to death their best 
dramatic writer, because he was a Jew. 

Yours, 
Robert Southey. 

The CoiiisEUM 

Percy Bysshe Shelley to T. L. Peacoch 

Naples, December 22, 1818. 
Since I last wrote to you, I have seen the ruins of Rome, 
the Vatican, St. Peter's, and all the miracles of ancient 



96 LANDSCAPES 

and modern art contained in that majestic city. The im- 
pression of it exceeds anything I have ever experienced in 
my travels. We stayed there only a week, intending to re- 
turn at the end of February, and devote two or three 
months to its mines of inexhaustible contemplation, to 
which period I refer you for a minute account of it. We 
visited the Forum and the ruins of the Coliseum every 
day. The Coliseum is unlike any work of human hands I 
ever saw before. It is of enormous height and circuit, and 
the arches built of massy stones are piled on one another, 
and jut into the blue air, shattered into the forms of over- 
hanging rocks. It has been changed by time into the im- 
age of an amphitheatre of rocky hills overgrown by the 
wild olive, the myrtle, and the fig-tree, and threaded by 
little paths, which wind among its ruined stairs and im- 
measurable galleries: the copsewood overshadows you as 
you wander through its labyrinths, and the wild weeds of 
this climate of flowers bloom under your feet. The arena 
is covered with grass, and pierces, like the skirts of a 
natural plain, the chasms of the broken arches around. 
But a small part of the exterior circumference remains — 
it is exquisitely light and beautiful; and the effect of the 
perfection of its architecture, adorned with ranges of 
Corinthian pilasters, supporting a bold cornice, is such as 
to diminish the effect of its greatness. The interior is all 
ruin. I can scarcely believe that even when encrusted 
with Dorian marble and ornamented by columns of Egyp- 
tian granite, its effect could have been so sublime and so 
impressive as in its present state. It is open to the sky, 
and it was the clear and sunny weather of the end of No- 
vember in this climate when we visited it, day after day. 
Near it is the arch of Constantine, or rather the arch of 
Trajan; for the servile and avaricious senate of degraded 
Rome ordered that the monument of his predecessor should 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 97 

be demolished in order to dedicate one to the Christian 
reptile, who had crept among the blood of his murdered 
family to the supreme power. It is exquisitely beautiful 
and perfect. The Forum is a plain in the midst of Eome, 
a kind of desert full of heaps of stones and pits; and 
though so near the habitations of men, is the most desolate 
place you can conceive. The ruins of temples stand in 
and around it, shattered columns and ranges of others 
complete, supporting cornices of exquisite workmanship, 
and vast vaults of shattered domes distinct with regular 
compartments, once filled with sculptures of ivory or brass. 
The temples of Jupiter, and Concord, and Peace, and the 
Sun, and the Moon, and Vesta, are all within a short dis- 
tance of this spot. Behold the wrecks of what a great na- 
tion once dedicated to the abstractions of the mind ! Eome 
is a city, as it were, of the dead, or rather of those who 
cannot die, and who survive the puny generations which 
inhabit and pass over the spot which they have made sacred 
to eternity. In Eome, at least in the first enthusiasm of 
your recognition of ancient time, you see nothing of the 
Italians. The nature of the city assists the delusion, for 
its vast and antique walls describe a circumference of six- 
teen miles, and thus the population is thinly scattered over 
this space, nearly as great as London. Wide wild fields 
are enclosed within it, and there are grassy lanes and copses 
winding among the ruins, and a great green hill, lonely 
and bare, which overhangs the Tiber. The gardens of the 
modern palaces are like wild woods of cedar, and cypress, 
and pine, and the neglected walks are overgrown with 
weeds. The English burying-place is a green slope near 
the walls, under the p5rramidal tomb of Cestius, and is, 
I think, the most beautiful and solemn cemetery I ever be- 
held. To see the sun shining on its bright grass, fresh, 
when we first visited it, with the autumnal dews, and hear 



98 LANDSCAPES 

the whispering of the wind among the leaves of the trees 
which have overgrown the tomb of Cestius, and the soil 
which is stirring in the sun-warm earth, and to mark the 
tombs, mostly of women and young people who were buried 
there, one might, if one were to die, desire the sleep they 
seem to sleep. Such is the human mind, and so it peoples 
with its wishes vacancy and oblivion. 

Ascending Vesuvius 

Percy Bysshe Shelley to T. L. Peacock 

(Same Letter) 

Vesuvius is, after the Glaciers, the most impressive ex- 
hibition of the energies of nature I ever saw. It has not 
the immeasurable greatness, the overpowering magnifi- 
cence, nor, above all, the radiant beauty of the glaciers; 
but it has all their character of tremendous and irresist- 
ible strength. From Eesina to the hermitage you wind up 
the mountain, and cross a vast stream of hardened lava, 
which is an actual image of the waves of the sea, changed 
into hard black stone by enchantment. The lines of the 
boiling flood seem to hang in the air, and it is difficult to 
believe that the billows which seem hurrying down upon 
you are not actually in motion. This plain was once a sea 
of liquid fire. From the hermitage we crossed another vast 
stream of lava, and then went on foot up the cone — this 
is the only part of the ascent in which there is any diffi- 
culty, and that difficulty has been much exaggerated. It 
is composed of rocks of lava, and declivities of ashes; by 
ascending the former and descending the latter, there is 
very little fatigue. On the summit is a kind of irregular 
plain, the most horrible chaos that can be imagined ; riven 
into ghastly chasms, and heaped up with tumuU of great 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 99 

stones and cinders, and enormous rocks blackened and cal- 
cined, which had been thrown from the volcano upon one 
another in terrible confusion. In the midst stands the 
conical hill from which volumes of smoke, and the foun- 
tains of liquid fire, are rolled forth forever. The moun- 
tain is at present in a slight state of eruption; and a thick 
heavy white smoke is perpetually rolled out, interrupted by 
enormous columns of an impenetrable black bituminous 
vapour, which is hurled up, fold after fold, into the sky 
with a deep hollow sound, and fiery stones are rained down 
from its darkness, and a black shower of ashes fell even 
where we sat. The lava, like the glacier, creeps on per- 
petually, with a crackling sound as of suppressed fire. 
There are several springs of lava; and in one place it 
rushes precipitously over a high crag, rolling down the 
half-molten rocks and its own overhanging waves; a cat- 
aract of quivering fire. We approached the extremity of 
one of the rivers of lava ; it is about twenty feet in breadth 
and ten in height ; and as the inclined plane was not rapid, 
its motion was very slow. We saw the masses of its dark 
exterior surface detach themselves as it moved, and betray 
the depth of the liquid flame. In the day the fire is but 
slightly seen; you only observe a tremulous motion in the 
air, and streams and fountains of white sulphurous smoke. 
At length we saw the sun sink, between Caprese and In- 
arime, and, as the darkness increased, the effect of the 
fire became more beautiful. We were, as it were, sur- 
rounded by streams and cataracts of the red and radiant 
fire; and in the midst, from the column of bituminous 
smoke shot up into the air, fell the vast masses of rock, 
white with the light of their intense heat, leaving behind 
them through the dark vapour trains of splendour. We 
descended by torch-light, and I should have enjoyed the 
scenery on my return, but they conducted me, I know not 



100 LANDSCAPES 

how, to the hermitage in a state of intense hodily suffer- 
ing, the worst effect of which was spoiling the pleasure of 
Mary and C . Our guides on the occasion were com- 
plete savages. You have no idea of the horrible cries 
which they suddenly utter, no one knows why; the clam- 
our, the vociferation, the tumult. C in her palanquin 

suffered most from it ; and when I had gone on before, they 
threatened to leave her in the middle of the road, which 
they would have done had not my Italian servant promised 
them a beating, after which they became quiet. Nothing, 
however, can be more picturesque than the gestures and 
the physiognomies of these savage people. And when, in 
the darkness of night, they unexpectedly begin to sing in 
chorus some fragments of their wild but sweet national 
music, the effect is exceedingly fine. 



Dome Beyond Dome, Palaces and Colonnades 

Percy ByssJie Shelley to T. L. Peacoclc 

Eome, March 23, 1819. 
I walk forth in the purple and golden light of an Italian 
evening, and return by star or moonlight, through this 
scene. The elms are just budding, and the warm spring 
winds bring unknown odours, all sweet from the country. 
I see the radiant Orion through the mighty columns of 
the temple of Concord, and the mellow fading light softens 
down the modern buildings of the Capitol, the only ones 
that interfere with the sublime desolation of the scene. On 
the steps of the Capitol itself, stand two colossal statues 
of Castor and Pollux, each with his horse, finely executed, 
though far inferior to those of Monte Cavallo, the cast of 
one of which you know we saw together in London. This 
walk is close to our lodging, and this is my evening walk. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 101 

What shall I say of the modern city? Rome is yet the 
capital of the world. It is a city of palaces and temples, 
more glorious than those which any other city contains, 
and of ruins more glorious than they. Seen from any of 
the eminences that surround it, it exhibits domes beyond 
domes, and palaces, and colonnades interminably, even to 
the horizon; interspersed with patches of desert, and 
mighty ruins which stand girt by their own desolation, in 
the midst of the fanes of living religions and the habita- 
tions of living men, in sublime loneliness. St. Peter's is, 
as you have heard, the loftiest building in Europe. Ex- 
ternally it is inferior in architectural beauty to St. Paul's, 
though not wholly devoid of it; internally it exhibits little- 
ness on a large scale, and is in every respect opposed to 
antique taste. You know my propensity to admire; and I 
tried to persuade myself out of this opinion — in vain; the 
more I see of the interior of St. Peter's, the less impres- 
sion as a whole does it produce on me. I cannot even think 
it lofty, though its dome is considerably higher than any 
hill within fifty miles of London; and when one reflects, 
it is an astonishing monument of the daring energy of 
man. Its colonnade is wonderfully fine, and there are two 
fountains, which rise in spire-like columns of water to an 
immense height in the sky, and falling on the porphyry 
vases from which they spring, fill the whole air with a 
radiant mist, which at noon is thronged with innumer- 
able rainbows. In the midst stands an obelisk. In front 
is the palace-like fagade of St. Peter's, certainly magnifi- 
cent; and there is produced, on the whole, an architectural 
combination unequalled in the world. But the dome of 
the temple is concealed, except at a very great distance, by 
the fagade and the inferior part of the building, and that 
diabolical contrivance they call an attic. 



102 LANDSCAPES 

" Good God, My Dear Fellow, Have We Lived to 

See This!" 

Charles Dickens to John Forster 

Tuesday night, 12th November, 1844. 
I must not anticipate myself. But, my dear fellow, 
nothing in the world that ever you have heard of Venice, 
is equal to the magnificent and stupendous reality. The 
wildest visions of the Arabian Nights are nothing to the 
piazza of Saint Mark, and the first impression of the in- 
side of the Church. The gorgeous and wonderful reality 
of Venice is beyond the fancy of the wildest dreamer. 
Opium couldn't build such a place, and enchantment 
couldn't shadow it forth in a vision. All that I have heard 
of it, read of it in truth or fiction, fancied of it, is left 
thousands of miles behind. You know that I am liable to 
be disappointed in such things through over-expectation, 
but Venice is above, beyond, out of all reach coming of 
near, the imagination of a man. It has never been rated 
high enough. It is a thing you would shed tears to see. 
When I came on hoard here last night (after a five miles' 
row in a gondola ; which, somehow or other, I wasn't at all 
prepared for) ; then, from seeing the city lying, one night, 
upon the distant water, like a ship, I came plashing 
through the silent and deserted streets; I felt as if the 
houses were reality — the water, fever madness. But when, 
in the bright cold bracing day, I stood upon the piazza 
this morning, by Heaven the glory of the place was insup- 
portable ! And diving down from that into its wickedness 
and gloom — its awful prisons deep below the water; its 
judgment chambers, secret doors, deadly nooks, where the 
torches you carry with you blink as if they couldn't bear 
the air in which the frightful scenes were acted; and com- 



THOMAS CARLYLE 103 

ing out again into the radiant, unsubstantial Magic of 
the town; and diving in again, into vast churches, and 
old tombs — a new sensation, a new memory, a new mind 
came upon me. Venice is a bit of my brain from this 
time. My dear Forster, if you could share my transports 
(as you would if you were here) what would I not give. 
. . . I never saw the thing before that I should 
be afraid to describe. But to tell what Venice is, 
I feel to be an impossibility. And here I sit alone, writ- 
ing it: with nothing to urge me on, or goad me to that 
estimate, which, speaking of it to anyone I loved, and 
being spoken to in return, would lead me to form. In the 
sober solitude of a famous inn ; with the great bell of Saint 
Mark ringing twelve at my elbow; with three arched win- 
dows in my room (two stories high) looking down upon 
the grand canal and away, beyond, to where the sun went 
down to-night in a blaze; and thinking over again those 
silent speaking faces of Titian and Tintoretto; I swear 
(uncooled by any humbug I have seen) that Venice is the 
wonder and the new sensation of the world! If you 
could be set down in it, never having heard of it, it would 
still be so. With your foot upon its stones, its pictures 
before you, and its history in your mind, it is something 
past all writing of or speaking of — almost past all think- 
ing of. You couldn't talk to me in this room, nor I to 
you, without shaking hands and saying ' Good God, my 
dear fellow, have we lived to see this ! ' 

In Luther's Country 

Thomas Carlyle to Margaret Carlyle ^ 

Weimar, Sept. 19, 1852. 
The Landgraf's high old castle, where we loitered a 

* Margaret Carlyle was Carlyle's mother, to whom many of his 
best letters are addressed. It is pathetically noticeable how he 



104 LANDSCAPES 

couple of hours, is now a correction-house filled with crim- 
inals and soldiers. The chamber of conference between 
Luther, Zwingli, etc., is used for keeping hay. The next 
morning brought us from Cassel to Eisenach, with its 
Wartburg, where Luther lay concealed translating the 
Bible; and there I spent one of the most interesting fore- 
noons I ever got by travelling. Eisenach is about as big 
as Dumfries, a very old town but well whitewashed, all 
built of brick and oak with red tile roofs of amazing steep- 
ness and several grim old swag-bellied steeples and 
churches and palatial residences rising conspicuous over 
them. It stands on a perfect plain by the side of a little 
river, a plain smaller than Langholm and surrounded by 
hills which are not so high, yet of a somewhat similar 
character, and are all grassy and many of them thickly 
wooded. Directly on the south side of it there rises one 
hill, somewhat as Lockerbie hill is in height and position, 
but clothed with trim rich woods; all the way through 
which wind paths with prospect houses, etc. On the top 
of the hill stands the old Wartburg, which it takes you 
three-quarters of an hour to reach; an old castle — Watch 
Castle is the name of it — near 800 years old, where there 
is still a kind of garrison kept, perhaps twenty men; 
though it does not look like a fortress ; what one sees from 
below being mainly two monstrous old houses, so to speak, 
with enormous roofs to them, comparable to two gigantic 
peat stacks set somewhat apart. There are other lower 
buildings that connect these when one gets up. There is 
also of course a wall all round — a donjon tower, standing 
like Repentance — and the Duke of Weimar, to whom the 

is at pains to illustrate his description of the German scenery, 
that it may become more real to her, by repeated references to 
the familiar localities of Ecelefechan, e. g., the Tower of Re- 
pentance stood on Hoddam Hill. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 105 

place belongs, is engaged in restorations, etc., and lias 
many masons employed on it just now. I heeded little of 
all they had to show, except Junker Georg's' chamber, 
which is in the nearest of the peat stacks, the one nearest 
Eisenach and close by the gate when you enter on your 
right hand. A short stair of old worn stone conducts you 
up. They open a door, you enter a little apartment, less 
than your best room at Scotsbrig, I almost think less than 
your smallest, a very poor low room with an old leaded 
lattice window; to me the most venerable of all rooms I 
ever entered. Luther's old oak table is there, about three 
feet square, and a huge fossil bone — vertebra of a mam- 
moth — which served him for a footstool. Nothing else 
now in the room did certainly belong to him; but these 
did. I kissed his old oak table, looked out of his window 
— making them open it for me — down the sheer castle 
wall into deep chasms, over the great ranges of silent 
woody mountains, and thought to myself, "Here once 
lived for a time one of God's soldiers. Be honour given 
him." Luther's father and mother, painted by Cranach, 
are here — excellent old portraits — the father's with a dash 
of thrift, contention, and worldly wisdom in his old judi- 
cious, peasant countenance, the mother particularly pious, 
kind, true, and motherly — a noble old peasant woman. 
There is also Luther's self by the same Cranach; a picture 
infinitely superior to what your lithograph would give a 
notion of ; a bold effectual-looking rustic man, with brown 
eyes and skin; with a dash of peaceable self-confidence and 
healthy defiance in the look of him. In fact one is called 
to forget the engraving in looking at this; and indeed I 
have since found the engraving is not from this, but from 
another Cranach, to which also it has no tolerable re- 

* The name under which Luther passed when concealed there. 



106 LANDSCAPES 

semblance. But I must say no more of the Wartburg. We 
saw the place on the plaster where he threw his inkstand — 
the plaster is all cut out and carried ofE by visitors — saw 
the outer staircase which is close by the door where he 
speaks of often hearing the Devil make noises. Poor and 
noble Luther! I shall never forget this Wartburg, and 
am right glad of it. 

That afternoon, there being no train convenient, we 
drove to Gotha in a kind of clatch — two horsed — very 
cheap in these parts; a bright beautiful cou^^itry and a 
bonny little town; belongs to Prince Albert's brother, 
more power to his elbow ! There we lodged in sumptuous 
rooms in an old quiet inn; the very rooms where Napo- 
leon lodged after being beaten at Leipzig. It seemed I 
slept last night where he breakfasted, if that would do 
much for me. At noon we came to Erfurt, a place of 30,- 
000 inhabitants, and now a Prussian fortified town, all 
intersected with ditches of water for defence' sake. Streets 
very crooked, very narrow, houses with old overhanging 
walls, and still the very room in it where Martin Luther 
lived when a monk, and, one guide-book said, the very 
Bible he found in the Convent library and read in this 
cell. This of the Bible proved to be wrong. Luther's 
particular Bible is not here, but is said to be at Berlin. 
Nothing really of Luther's there except the poor old lat- 
ticed window glazed in lead, the main panes round, and 
about the size of a biggish S7iap, all bound together by 
whirligig intervals. It looks out to the west, over mere 
old cloistered courts and roof-tops against a church steeple, 
and is itself in the second storey. Except this and Luther's 
old inkstand, a poor old oaken boxie with inkbottle and 
sand case in it now hardly sticking together, there is noth- 
ing to be seen here that actually belonged to Luther. The 
walls are all covered over with texts, etc., in painted letters 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 107 

by a later hand. The ceiling also is ornamentally painted ; 
and indeed the place is all altered now, and turned long 
ago into an orphan asylum, much of the old building 
gone and replaced by a new of a different figure. On one 
wall of the room, however, is again a portrait of Luther 
by Cranach, and this I found on inspection was the one 
your engravers had been vainly aiming at. Vainly, for 
this too is a noble face; the eyes not turned up in hypo- 
critical devotion, but looking out in profound sorrow and 
determination, the lips too gathered in stern but affection- 
ate firmness. He is in russet yellow boots, and the collar 
of his shirt is small and edged with black. 

He Buys a Constable 

Edward FitzGerald to F. Tennyson'' 

London, Jan. 16, 1841. 
Dear Frederic, 

I have just concluded, with all the throes of imprudent 
pleasure, the purchase of a large picture by Constable, of 
which, if I can continue in the mood, I will enclose you a 
sketch. It is very good : but how you and Morton would 
abuse it! Yet this, being a sketch, escapes some of Con- 
stable's faults, and might escape some of your censures. 
The trees are not splashed with that white sky-mud, which 
(according to Constable's theory) the Earth scatters up 
with her wheels in travelling so briskly round the sun ; and 
there is a dash and felicity in the execution that gives 
one a thrill of good digestion in one's room, and the 
thought of which makes one inclined to jump over the chil- 
dren's heads in the streets. Yet if you could see my great 

^ Who was Lord Alfred Tennyson's eldest brother and himself 
a poet. In 1854, he published Days and Hours; in 1890, the 
Isles of Greece; in 1891, Daphne and Other Poems. 



108 LANDSCAPES 

enormous Venetian Picture you would be extonished. Does 
the thought ever strike you, when looking at pictures in 
a house, that you are to run and Jump at one, and go right 
through it into some behind-scene world on the other side, 
as Harlequins do? A steady portrait especially invites one 
to do so; the quietude of it ironically tempts one to out- 
rage it : one feels it would close again over the panel, like 
water, as if nothing had happened. That portrait of Sped- 
ding,i for instance, which Laurence has given me: not 
swords, nor cannon, nor all the Bulls of Bashan butting at 
it, could, I feel sure, discompose that venerable forehead. 
No wonder that no hair can grow at such an altitude: no 
wonder that his view of Bacon's virtue is so rarefied that 
the common consciences of men cannot endure it. Thack- 
eray and I occasionally amuse ourselves with the idea of 
Spedding's forehead: we find it somehow or other in all 
things, just peering out of all things : you see it in a mile- 
stone, Thackeray says. He also draws the forehead rising 
with a sober light over Mont Blanc, and reflected in the 
Lake of Geneva. We have great laughing over this. The 
forehead is at present in Pembrokeshire, I believe: or 
Glamorganshire: or Monmouthshire: it is hard to say 
which. It has gone to spend its Christmas there. 

* James Spedding (1808-1881), who in 1847 refused to become 
Under-Secretary of State in order that he might devote his life 
to the re-editing of Bacon's Works, which, according to Edward 
FitzGerald, did not require any such re-editing, and to the vin- 
dicating of his character, which could not be vindicated. Car- 
lyle said of him, " He was the wisest man I have known." 



Ill 

The Love of Cities 



"London never was so entertaining since it had a steeple or a 
madhouse." 

Eoraoe Walpole (1717-1797) 

Elia prefers Fleet Street to Skiddaw. 

Charles Lamb (1775-1835) 

In exile. 

Charles Laml (1775-1835) 

A prophet enters Babylon. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 



" London Never was so Entertaining Since it had a 
Steeple or a Madhouse " 

Horace Walpole to George Montagu^ Esq. 

Arlington-street, Nov. 20, 1763. 
You are in the wrong; believe me you are in the wrong 
to stay in the country; London never was so entertaining 
since it had a steeple or a madhouse. Cowards fight duels ; 
secretaries of state turn methodists on the Tuesday, and 
are expelled the play-house for blasphemy on Friday. I 
am not turned methodist, but patriot, and, what is more 
extraordinary, am not going to have a place. What is 
more wonderful still, lord Hardwicke has made two of his 
sons resign their employments. I know my letter sounds 
as enigmatic as Merlin's almanack: but mi/ events have 
really happened. I had almost persuaded myself like you 
to quit the world; thank my stars I did not. Why I have 
done nothing but laugh since last Sunday; though on 
Tuesday I was one of a hundred and eleven, who were out- 
voted by three hundred ; no laughing matter generally to a 
true patriot, whether he thinks his country undone or him- 
self. Nay, I am still more absurd; even for my dear coun- 
try's sake I cannot bring myself to connect with lord 
Hardwicke, or the duke of Newcastle, though they are in 
the minority — an unprecedented case, not to love every- 
body one despises, when they are of the same side. On the 
contrary, I fear I resemble a fond woman, and dote on the 
dear betrayer. In short, and to write something that you 
can understand, you know I have long had a partiality 

111 



112 THE LOVE OF CITIES 

for your cousin Sandwich, who has out- Sandwiched him- 
self. He has impeached Wilkes for a blasphemous poem, 
and has been expelled for blasphemy himself by the beef- 
steak club at Covent-garden. Wilkes has been shot by 
Martin, and instead of being burnt at an auto da fe, as the 
bishop of Gloucester intended, is reverenced as a saint by 
the mob, and, if he dies, I suppose, the people will squint 
themselves into convulsions at his tomb, in honour of his 
memory. Now is not this better than feeding one's birds 
and one's bantams, poring one's eyes out over old histories, 
not half so extraordinary as the present, or ambling to 
squire Bencow's on one's padnag, and playing at cribbage 
with one's brother John and one's parson? Prithee come 
to town, and let us put off taking the veil for another year : 
besides, by this time twelvemonth we are sure the world 
will be a year older in wickedness, and we shall have more 
matter for meditation. One would not leave it methinks 
till it comes to the worst, and that time cannot be many 
months off. In the meantime, I have bespoken a dagger, 
in case the circumstance should grow so classic as to make 
it becoming to kill oneself; however, though disposed to 
quit the world, as I have no mind to leave it entirely, I 
shall put off my death to the last minute, and do nothing 
rashly, till I see Mr. Pitt and lord Temple place them- 
selves in their curule chairs in St. James's-market, and re- 
sign their throats to the victors. I am determined to see 
them dead first, lest they should play me a trick, and be 
hobbling to Buckingham-house, while I am shivering and 
waiting for them on the banks of Lethe. Adieu ! 

Yours, HoRATius. 



CHARLES LAMB 113 

EiiiA Prefers Fleet Street to Skiddaw 

Charles Lamb to Manning 

London, September 24, 1802. 
My Dear Manning, — Since the date of my last letter 
I have been a traveller. A strong desire seized me 
of visiting remote regions. My first impulse was to 
go and see Paris. It was a trivial objection to my 
aspiring mind, that I did not understand a word of 
the language, since I certainly intend some time in 
my life to see Paris, and equally certainly never intend 
to learn the language; therefore that could be no objec- 
tion. However, I am very glad I did not go, because you 
had left Paris (I see) before I could have set out. I be- 
lieve, Stoddart promising to go with me another year pre- 
vented that plan. My next scheme (for to my restless, am- 
bitious mind London was become a bed of thorns) was to 
visit the far-famed Peak in Derbyshire, where the Devil 
sits, they say, without breeches. This my purer mind re- 
jected as indelicate. And my final resolve was a tour to 
the Lakes. I set out with Mary to Keswick, without giv- 
ing Coleridge any notice; for my time being precious did 
not admit of it. He received us with all the hospitality in 
the world, and gave up his time to show us all the won- 
ders of the country. He dwells upon a small hill by the 
side of Keswick, in a comfortable house, quite enveloped 
on all sides by a net of mountains : great floundering bears 
and monsters they seemed, all couchant and asleep. We 
got in in the evening, travelling in a post-chaise from Pen- 
rith, in the midst of a gorgeous sunshine, which trans- 
muted all the mountains into colours, purple, etc., etc. 
We thought we had got into fairyland. But that went off 
(as it never came again — while we stayed we had no more 
fine sunsets) ; and we entered Coleridge's comfortable study 



114 THE LOVE OF CITIES 

just in the dusk, when the mountains were all dark with 
clouds upon their heads. Such an impression I never re- 
ceived from objects of sight before, nor do I suppose I 
can ever again. Glorious creatures, fine old fellows, Skid- 
daw, etc. I never shall forget ye, how ye lay about that 
night, like an intrenchment ; gone to bed, as it seemed 
for the night, but promising that ye were to be seen in the 
morning. Coleridge had got a blazing fire in his study; 
which is a large, antique, ill-shaped room, with an old- 
fashioned organ, never played upon, big enough for a 
church, shelves of scattered folios, an iEolian harp, and an 
old sofa, half-bed, etc. And all looking out upon the last 
fading view of Skiddaw and his broad-breasted brethren: 
what a night! Here we stayed three full weeks, in which 
time I visited Wordsworth's cottage, where we stayed a 
day or two with the Clarksons (good people and most hos- 
pitable, at whose house we tarried one day and night), 
and saw Lloyd. The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. 
They have since been in London and passed much time with 
us: he is now gone into Yorkshire to be married. So we 
have seen Keswick, Grasmere, Ambleside, Ills water (where 
the Clarksons live), and a place at the other end of Uls- 
water — I forget the name — to which we travelled on a very 
sultry day, over the middle of Helvellyn. We have clam- 
bered up to the top of Skiddaw, and I have waded up the 
bed of Lodore. In fine, I have satisfied myself, that there 
is such a thing as that which tourists call romantic, which 
I very much suspected before: they make such a splutter- 
ing about it, and toss their splendid epithets around them, 
till they give as dim a light as at four o'clock next morn- 
ing the lamps do after an illumination. Mary was ex- 
cessively tired, when she got about half-way up Skiddaw, 
but we came to a cold rill (than which nothing can be 
imagined more cold, running over cold stones), and with 



CHARLES LAMB 115 

the reinforcement of a draught of cold water she sur- 
mounted it most manfully. Oh, its fine black head, and 
the bleak air atop of it, with a prospect of mountains all 
about, and about, making you giddy; and then Scotland 
afar off, and the border countries so famous in song and 
ballad ! It was a day that will stand out, like a mountain, 
I am sure, in my life. But I am returned (I have now 
been come home near three weeks — I was a month out), 
and you cannot conceive the degradation I felt at first, 
from being accustomed to wander free as air among moun- 
tains, and bathe in rivers without being controlled by any 
one, to come home and worh. I felt very little. I had 
been dreaming I was a very great man. But that is going 
off, and I find I shall conform in time to that state of life 
to which it has pleased God to call me. Besides, after all, 
Fleet-Street and the Strand are better places to live in 
for good and all than among Skiddaw. Still, I turn back 
to those great places where I wandered about, participat- 
ing in their greatness. After all, I could not live in Skid- 
daw. I could spend a year — two, three years — among 
them, but I must have a prospect of seeing Fleet-Street at 
the end of that time, or I should mope and pine away, I 
know. Still, Skiddaw is a fine creature. 



In E X 1 1, e 

Charles Lamb to William WordsivortJi 

p. m., January 22, 1830. 
And is it a year since we parted from you at the 
steps of Edmonton Stage? There are not now the years 
that there used to be. The tale of the dwindled age of 
men, reported of successional mankind, is true of the same 
man only. We do not live a year in a year now. ^Tis a 



116 THE LOVE OF CITIES 

punctum starts. The seasons pass us with indifference. 
Spring cheers not, nor winter heightens our gloom, 
Autumn hath foregone its moralities, they are hey-pass 
re-pass [as] in a show-box. Yet as far as last year oc- 
curs back, for they scarce show a reflex now, they make no 
memory as heretofore — 'twas sufficiently gloomy. Let the 
sullen nothing pass. 

Suffice it that after sad spirits prolonged thro' many of 
its months, as it called them, we have cast our skins, have 
taken a farewell of the pompous troublesome trifle called 
housekeeping, and are settled down into poor boarders 
and lodgers at next door with an old couple, the Baucis 
and Baucida of dull Enfield. Here we have nothing to do 
with our victuals but to eat them, with the garden but to 
see it grow, with the tax gatherer but to hear him knock, 
with the maid but to hear her scolded. Scot and lot, 
butcher, baker, are things unknown to us save as specta- 
tors of the pageant. We are fed we know not how, 
quietists, confiding ravens. We have the otium pro digni- 
tate, a respectable insignificance. Yet in the self -condemned 
obliviousness, in the stagnation, some molesting yearn- 
ings of life, not quite kill'd, rise, prompting me that there 
was a London, and that I was of that old Jerusalem. In 
dreams I am in Fleetmarket, but I wake and cry to sleep 
again. I die hard, a stubborn Eloisa in this detestable 
Paraclete. What have I gained by health? intolerable dul- 
ness. What by early hours and moderate meals? — a total 
blank. never let the lying poets be believed, who 'tice 
men from the cheerful haunts of streets — or think they 
mean it not of a country village. In the ruins of Palmyra 
I could gird myself up to solitude, or muse to the snorings 
of the Seven Sleepers, but to have a little teazing image of 
a town about one, country folks that do not look like 
country folks, shops two yards square, half a dozen apples 



CHARLES LAMB 117 

and two penn'ortJi of overlooked gingerbread for the lofty 
fruiterers of Oxford Street — and, for the immortal book 
and print stalls, a circulating library that stands still, 
where the show-picture is a last year's Valentine, and 
whither the fame of the last ten Scotch novels has not yet 
travel'd (marry, they just begin to be conscious of the 
Eedgauntlet) , to have a new plastered flat church, and 
to be wishing that it was but a Cathedral. The very black- 
guards here are degenerate. The topping gentry, stock 
brokers. The passengers too many to ensure your quiet, 
or let you go about whistling, or gaping — too few to be 
the fine indifferent pageants of Fleet Street. Confining, 
room-keeping thickest w^inter is yet more bearable here 
than the gaudy months. Among one's books at one's fire 
by candle one is soothed into an oblivion that one is not in 
the country, but with the light the green fields return, till 
I gaze, and in a calenture can plunge myself into Saint 
Giles's. let no native Londoner imagine that health, 
and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of con- 
verse sweet and recreative study, can make the country any 
thing better than altogether odious and detestable. A gar- 
den was the primitive prison till man with promethean 
felicity and boldness luckily sinn'd himself out of it. 
Thence follow'd Babylon, Nineveh, Venice, London, haber- 
dashers, goldsmiths, taverns, playhouses, satires, epigrams, 
puns — these all came in on the town part, and the thither 
side of innocence. Man found out inventions. 

From my den I return you condolence for your decaying 
sight, not for any thing there is to see in the country, but 
for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London news- 
paper. The poets are as well to listen to, any thing high 
may, nay must, be read out — you read it to yourself with 
an imaginary auditor — but the light paragraphs must be 
glid over by the proper eye, mouthing mumbles their gos- 



118 THE LOVE OF CITIES 

samery substance. 'Tis these trifles I should mourn in 
fading sight. A newspaper is the single gleam of comfort 
I receive here, it comes from rich Cathay with tidings of 
mankind. Yet I could not attend to it read out by the 
most beloved voice. But your eyes do not get worse, I 
gather. for the collyrium of Tobias enclosed in a 
whiting's liver to send you with no apocryphal good wishes ! 
The last long time I heard from you, you had knock'd your 
head against something. Do not do so. For your head 
(I do not flatter) is not a nob, or the top of a brass nail, 
or the end of a nine-pin — unless a Vulcanian hammer 
could fairly batter a " Recluse " out of it, then would I bid 
the smirch'd god knock and knock lustily, the two-handed 
skinker. What a nice long letter Dorothy has written! 
Mary must squeeze out a line propria manw, but indeed her 
fingers have been incorrigibly nervous to letter-writing for 
a long interval. 'Twill please you all to hear that, tho' I 
fret like a lion in a net, her present health and spirits are 
better than they have been for some time past : she is abso- 
lutely three years and a half younger, as I tell her, since 
we have adopted this boarding plan. Our providers are 
an honest pair, dame Westwood and her husband — ^he, 
when the light of prosperity shined on them, a moderately 
thriving haberdasher within Bow Bells, retired since with 
something under a competence, writes himself parcel gen- 
tleman, hath borne parish offices, sings fine old sea songs 
at threescore and ten, sighs only now and then when he 
thinks that he has a son on his hands about 15, whom he 
finds a difficulty in getting out into the world, and then 
checks a sigh with muttering, as I once heard him prettily, 
not meaning to be heard, " I have married my daughter 
however," — takes the weather as it comes, outsides it to 
town in severest season, and a' winter nights tells old 
stories not tending to literature, how comfortable to author- 



CHARLES LAMB 119 

rid folks! and has one anecdote, upon which and about 
forty pounds a year he seems to have retired in green old 
age. It was how he was a rider in his youth, travelling for 
shops, and once (not to baulk his employer's bargain) on 
a sweltering day in August, rode foaming into Dunstable 
upon a mad horse to the dismal and expostulary wonder- 
ment of innkeepers, ostlers, etc., who declared they would 
not have bestrid the beast to win the Darby. Understand 
the creature gall'd to death and desperation by gad flies, 
cormorants winged, worse than beset Inachus' daughter. 
This he tells, this he brindles and burnishes on a' winter's 
eves, 'tis his star of set glory, his rejuvenescence to descant 
upon. Far from me be it (dii avertant) to look a gift 
story in the mouth, or cruelly to surmise (as those who 
doubt the plunge of Curtius) that the inseparate conjunc- 
ture of man and beast, the centaur-phenomenon that stag- 
ger'd all Dunstable, might have been the effect of unro- 
mantic necessity, that the horse-paTt carried the reasoning, 
willy nilly, that needs must when such a devil drove, that 
certain spiral configurations in the frame of Thomas West- 
wood unfriendly to alighting, made the alliance more forci- 
ble than voluntary. Let him enjoy his fame for me, nor 
let me hint a whisper that shall dismount Bellerophon. 
Put case he was an involuntary martyr, yet if in the fiery 
conflict he buckled the soul of a constant haberdasher to 
him, and adopted his flames, let Accident and He share the 
glory ! You would all like Thomas Westwood. 

,?■& 

//^ 

How weak is painting to describe a man! Say that he 
stands four feet and a nail high by his own yard measure, 



IW THE LOVE OF CITIES 

which like the Sceptre of Agamemnon shall never sprout 
again, still you have no adequate idea, nor when I tell you 
that his dear hump, which I have favoured in the picture, 
seems to me of the Buffalo — indicative and repository of 
mild qualities, a budget of kindnesses, still you have not 
the man. Knew you old Norris of the Temple, 60 years 
ours and our father's friend, he was not more natural to 
us than this old W. the acquaintance of scarce more weeks. 
Under his roof now ought I to take my rest, but that back- 
looking ambition tells me I might yet be a Londoner. 
Well, if we ever do move, we have encumbrances the less 
to impede us: all our furniture has faded under the auc- 
tioneer's hammer, going for nothing like the tamish'd frip- 
pery of the prodigal, and we have only a spoon or two left 
to bless us. Clothed we came into Enfield, and naked we 
must go out of it. I would live in London shirtless, book- 
less. 

A Prophet Enters Babylon 
Thomas Carlyle to Dr. Carlyle 

Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, June 17, 1834. 
My dear Brother, — You can fancy what weary lone- 
some wanderings I had, through the dirty suburbs, and 
along the burning streets, under a fierce May sun with east 
wind ; " seeking through the natives for some habitation " ! 
At length Jane sent me comfortable tidings of innumerable 
difficulties overcome; and finally (in, I think, the fourth 
week) arrived herself; with the Furniture all close follow- 
ing her, in one of Pickford's Trade-boats. I carried her to 
certain of the hopefuUest looking houses I had fallen in 
with, and a toilsome time we anew had: however, it was 
not long; for, on the second inspection, this old Chelsea 
Mansion pleased very decidedly, far better than any other 



THOMAS CARLYLE 121 

we could see; and, the people also whom it belongs to 
proving reasonable, we soon struck a bargain, and in three 
days more (precisely this very week) a Hackney Coach, 
loaded to the roof and beyond it with luggage and live-pas- 
sengers, tumbled us all down here about eleven in the 
morning. By ^' all " I mean my Dame and myself ; Bessy 
Barnet, who had come the night before ; and — little Chico, 
the Canary-bird, who multum jactatus did nevertheless 
arrive living and well from Puttock, and even sang vio- 
lently all the way by sea or land, nay struck up his lilt in 
the very London streets wherever he could see green leaves 
and feel the free air. There then we sat on three trunks; 
I, however, with a matchbox soon lit a cigar, as Bessy did a 
fire; and thus with a kind and cheerful solemnity we took 
possession by " raising reek," and even dined, in an extem- 
pore fashion, on a box-lid covered with some accidental 
towel. At two o'clock the Pickfords did arrive; and tlien 
began the hurty-burly; which even yet is but grown 
quieter, will not grow quiet, for a fortnight to come. 

However, the rooms and two bedrooms are now in a 
partially civilised state; the broken Furniture is mostly 
mended ; I have my old writing-table again (here) -firm as 
Atlas; a large wainscoted drawing-room (which is to be 
my study) with the "red carpet" tightly spread on it; 
my Books all safe in Presses; the Belisarius Picture right 
in front of me over the mantelpiece (most suitable to its 
new wainscot lodging), and my beloved Segretario Amhu- 
lante right behind, with the two old Italian engravings, and 
others that I value less, dispersed around ; and so, opposite 
the middle of my three windows, with little but huge 
Scotch elm-trees looking in on one, and in the distances an 
ivied House, and a sunshiny sky bursting out from genial 
rain. I sit here already very much at home, and impart 
to my dear and true brother a thankfulness which he is 



122 THE LOVE OF CITIES 

sure to share in. We have indeed very much reason to be 
thankful every way. 

With the House we are all highly pleased, and, I think, 
the better, the longer we know it hitherto. I know not if 
you ever were at Chelsea, especially at Old Chelsea, of 
of which this is a portion. It stretches from Battersea 
Bridge (a queer wooden structure, where they charge you 
a half -penny) along the bank of the Eiver, Westward a 
little way; and Eastward (which is our side) some quarter 
of a mile, forming a " Cheyne Walk ^' (pronounced Chainie 
walk) of really grand old brick mansions, dating perhaps 
from Charles II.'s time ("Don Saltero's Coffeehouse" of 
the Tatler is still fresh and brisk among them), with 
flagged pavement; carriage way between two rows of stub- 
born looking high old pollarded trees; and then the river 
with its varied small craft, fast moving or safe-moored, and 
the wholesome smell (among the breezes) of sea tar. 
Cheyne Row (or Great Cheyne Row, when we wish to be 
grand) runs up at right angles from this, has two twenty 
Houses of the same fashion; Upper Cheyne Row (where 
Hunt lives) turning again at right angles, some stone-cast 
from this door. 

Frontwards we have the outlook I have described already 
(or if we shove out our head, the River is disclosed some 
hundred paces to the left) ; backwards, from the ground 
floor, our own gardenkin (which I with new garden-tools 
am actively re-trimming every morning), and, from all 
other floors, nothing but leafy clumps, and green fields, and 
red high peaked roofs glimmering through them: a most 
clear, pleasant prospect, in these fresh westerly airs! Of 
London nothing visible but Westminster Abbey and the 
topmost dome of St. Paul's; other faint ghosts of spires 
(one other at least) disclose themselves, as the smoke- 
clouds shift; but I have not yet made out what they are. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 123 

At night we are pure and silent, almost as at Puttock ; and 
the gas-light shimmer of the great Babylon hangs stretched 
from side to side of our horizon. ... On the whole I fear 
nothing. There are funds here already to keep us going 
above a year, independently of all incomings: before that 
we may have seen into much, tried much, and succeeded 
somewhat. 

" God's providence they cannot hinder thee of " : that 
is the thing I always repeat to myself, or know without 
repeating. . . . God bless you, dear Brother! Vale mei 
memor, 

T. Carlyle. 



IV 
Criticising the Critics 



His hatred of mawkish popularity. 

John Keats (1195-1821) 

t-^6ncerning the scandalous critiques of Endymion in Blackwood 
and the Quarterly Review. 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

^ "The parable of the drummer-boy. 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

lyin defence of Keats. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) 

Lavengro and his wife, being aroused, proclaim war. 

Mr. and Mrs. George Borrow (1803-1881) 



His Hatred of Mawkish Popularity 

Jolm Keats to J. H. Reynolds 

Teignmouth, April 9, 1818. 
My dear Reynolds, — 

Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be so * — 
though I am not aware that there is anything like Hunt 
in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have 
something in common with Hunt). Look over it again, 
and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which every 
one sentence sprang. 

I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the 
public, or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, 
the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. 
When I am writing for myself, for the mere sake of the 
moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with 
me ; but a Preface is written to the public — a thing I can- 
not help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot 
address without feelings of hostility. If I write a Preface 
in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character 
with me as a public speaker. 

I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them 
for subduing me; but among multitudes of men I have 
no feel of stooping ; I hate the idea of humility to them. 

I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least 
shadow of public thought. 

Forgive me for vexing you, and making a Trojan horse 

* The first preface to Endymion. Within twenty-four hours 
he had reconsidered the matter here discussed, and had written 
the beautiful apology which now stands as preface. 

127 



128 CRITICISING THE CRITICS 

of such a trifle, both with respect to the matter in ques- 
tion, and myself; but it eases me to tell you: I could not 
live without the love of my friends; I would jump down 
^tna for any great public good, but I hate a mawkish 
popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory 
would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about 
pictures and books. I see swarms of porcupines with their 
quills erect " like lime-twigs set to catch my winged book," 
and I would fright them away with a touch. You will say 
my Preface is not much of a touch. It would have been too 
insulting "to begin from Jove," and I could not (set) a 
golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in 
the Preface, it is not affection, but an undersong of dis- 
respect to the public. If I write another Preface, it must 
be done without a thought of those people. I will think 
about it. If it should not reach you in four or five days, 
tell Taylor to publish it without a Preface, and let the 
Dedication simply stand — "Inscribed to the Memory of 
Thomas Chatterton." 



Concerning the Scandalous CRiTiauEs or Endymion 
IN Blackwood and The Quarterly Review 

John Keats to James Augustus Hessey 

9 October, 1818. 
My dear Hessey^ 

You are very good in sending me the letters from the 
Chronicle — and I am very bad in not acknowledging such 
a kindness sooner — pray forgive me. It has so chanced 
that I have had that paper every day — I have seen to-day's. 
I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have 
taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get a little 
acquainted with my own strength and weakness. — Praise or 



JOHN KEATS 129 

blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love 
of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on 
his own Works. My own domestic criticism has given me 
pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the 
Quarterly could possibly inflict— and also when I feel I 
am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as 
my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is 
fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to the slip-shod 
Endymion. That it is so is no fault of mine. No!— 
though it may sound a little paradoxical. It is as good as 
I had power to make it— by myself. Had I been nervous 
about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked 
advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have 
been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble— I will 
write independently.— I have written independently with- 
out Judgment. I may write independently, and with 
Judgment, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work 
out its own salvation in a man : It cannot be matured by 
law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in 
itself. That which is creative must create itself. In 
'' Endymion," I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby 
have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the 
quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the 
green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and com- 
fortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would 
sooner fail than not be among the greatest. But I am 
nigh getting into a rant. So, with remembrances to 
Taylor and Woodhouse, etc., I am 

Yours very sincerely 

JoHiT Keats. 



130 CRITICISING THE CRITICS 

The Parable of the Drummer-Boy 

John Keats to John Taylor 

Winchester, 23 August, 1819. 
My dear Taylor^ 

. . . Brown and I have together been engaged (this I 
should wish to remain secret) on a Tragedy which I have 
just finished and from which we hope to share moderate 
profits. ... I feel every confidence that, if I choose, I may 
be a popular writer. That I will never be; but for all 
that I will get a livelihood. I equally dislike the favour of 
the public with the love of a woman. They are both a 
cloying treacle to the wings of Independence. I shall ever 
consider them (People) as debtors to me for verses, not 
myself to them for admiration — which I can do without. 
I have of late been indulging my spleen by composing a 
preface at them: after all resolving never to write a 
preface at all. '^ There are so many verses,'^ would I have 
said to them, " give so much means for me to buy pleasure 
with, as a relief to my hours of labour." — You will observe 
at the end of this, if you put down the letter, "How a 
solitary life engenders pride and egotism ! " True — I 
know it does ; but this pride and egotism will enable me to 
write finer things than anything else could — so I will in- 
dulge it. Just so much as I am humbled by the genius 
above my grasp am I exalted and look with hate and con- 
tempt upon the literary world. — A drummer-boy who holds 
out his hand familiarly to a field-marshal, — ^that drummer- 
boy with me is the good word and favour of the public. 
Who could wish to be among the common-place crowd of 
the little famous — who are each individually lost in a 
throng made up of themselves? Is this worth louting or 
playing the hypocrite for? To beg suffrages for a seat on 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 131 

the benches of a myriad-aristocracy in letters? This is not 
wise — I am not a wise man. ^Tis pride — I will give you 
a definition of a proud man. He is a man who has neither 
Vanity nor Wisdom — one filled with hatreds cannot be 
vain, neither can he be wise. Pardon me for hammering 
instead of writing. Remember me to Woodhouse, Hessey, 
and all in Percy Street. 

Ever yours sincerely 

John Keats. 

In Defence of Keats 

Percy Bysshe Shelley to the Editor of the Quarterly 
Review * 

1820. 
Sir,— 

Should you cast your eye on the signature of this letter 
before you read the contents, you might imagine that they 
related to a slanderous paper which appeared in your 
Review some time since. I never notice anonymous at- 
tacks. The wretch who wrote it has doubtless the addi- 
tional reward of a consciousness of his motives, besides the 
thirty guineas a sheet or whatever it is that you pay him. 
Of course you cannot be answerable for all the writings 
which you edit, and I certainly bear you no ill-will for 
having edited the abuse to which I allude — indeed, I was 
too much amused by being compared to Pharaoh, not 
readily to forgive editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, or 
any one, except the despicable writer, connected with some- 
thing too exquisitely entertaining. Seriously speaking, I 
am not in the habit of permitting myself to be disturbed by 
what is said or written of me, though, I dare say, I may be 
condemned sometimes justly enough. But I feel, in re- 
* This letter was never sent. 



132 CRITICISING THE CRITICS 

spect to the writer in question, that " I am there sitting, 
where he durst not soar." 

The case is different with the unfortunate subject of this 
letter, the author of Endymion, to whose feelings and situa- 
tions I entreat you to allow me to call your attention. I 
write considerably in the dark ; but if it is Mr. Gilford that 
I am addressing, I am persuaded that, in an appeal to his 
humanity and justice, he will acknowledge the fas ab hoste 
doceri. 1 am aware that the first duty of a reviewer is 
towards the public, and I am willing to confess that the 
Endymion is a poem considerably defective, and that, per- 
haps, it deserved as much censure as the pages of your 
Review record against it; but, not to mention that there is 
a certain contemptuousness of phraseology from which it 
is difhcult for a critic to abstain, in the review of Endy- 
mion, I do not think that the writer has given it its due 
praise. Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a very re- 
markable production for a man of Keats' age, and the 
promise of ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been 
afforded even by such as have afterwards attained high 
literary eminence. Look at Book II., line 833, etc., and 
Book III., line 113 to 120; read down that page, and then 
again from line 195. I could cite many other passages, 
to convince you that it deserved milder usage. Why it 
should have been reviewed at all, excepting for the purpose 
of bringing its excellences into notice, I cannot conceive, 
for it was very little read, and there was no danger that it 
should become a model to the age of that false taste with 
which I confess that it is replenished. 

Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by 
this review, which, I am persuaded, was not written with 
any intention of producing the effect, to which it has, at 
least, greatly contributed, of embittering his existence, and 
inducing a disease, from which there are now but faint 



MR. AND MRS. GEORGE BORROW 133 

hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described to 
me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous 
watching that he was restrained from effecting purposes of 
suicide.^ The agony of his sufferings at length produced 
the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs, and the usual 
process of consumption appears to have begun. He is 
coming to pay me a visit in Italy ;2 but I fear that, unless 
his mind can be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from 
the mere influence of climate. 

But let me not extort anything from your pity. I have 
just seen a second volume,^ published by him evidently in 
careless despair. I have desired my bookseller to send you 
a copy, and allow me to solicit your especial attention to 
the fragment of a poem entitled Hyperion, the composition 
of which was checked by the Review in question. The 
great proportion of this piece is surely in the very highest 
style of poetry. I speak impartially, for the canons of 
taste to which Keats has conformed in his other composi- 
tions are the very reverse of my own. I leave you to judge 
for yourself; it would be an insult to you to suppose that, 
from motives however honourable, you would lend yourself 
to a deception of the public. 

Lavengro and His Wife, being Aroused, Proclaim 

War 

Mr. and Mrs. George Borrow to John Murray* 
Dear Mr. Murray,- Janwi/ 29, 1855. 

We have received your letters. In the first place I beg 

* Shelley was misinformed as to the cause of the illness of 
Keats, which was the madness of love. 

' Keats went to Rome and there died and was buried. He 
never visited Shelley. 

' Lamia and Other Poems, published 1820. 

* The letter was partly written by Mrs. Borrow at her hus- 



134 CRITICISING THE CRITICS 

leave to say something on a very principal point. You 
talk about conditions of publishing. Mr. Borrow has not 
the slightest wish to publish the book Romany Rye. The 
MS. was left with you because you wished to see it, and 
when left you were particularly requested not to let it pass 
out of your own hands. But it seems you have shown it to 
various individuals whose opinions you repeat. What 
those opinions are worth may be gathered from the follow- 
ing fact. 

The book is one of the most learned works ever written ; 
yet in the summary of the opinions which you give, not one 
single allusion is made to the learning which pervades 
the book, no more than if it contained none at all. 
It is treated Just as if all the philological and histori- 
cal facts were mere inventions, and the book a common 
novel. . . . 

With regard to Lavengro it is necessary to observe that 
if ever a book experienced infamous and undeserved treat- 
ment it was that book. It was (assailed by every trumpery 
creature who hated Mr. Borrow on account of his reputa- 
tion and acquirements)^ attacked in every form that envy 
and malice could suggest, on account of Mr. Borrow's 
acquirements and the success of the Bible in Spain, and it 
was deserted by those whose duty it was, in some degree, to 
have protected it. No attempt was ever made to refute the 
vile calumny that it was a book got up against the Popish 
agitation of '51. It was written years previous to that period 
— a fact of which none is better aware than the Publisher. 

band's dictation, partly by Borrow himself, but was signed by 
Mrs. Borrow. It accounts for the delay in the publication of 
Romany Rye, which did not take place until 1857, although 
promised since the appearance of Lavengro in 1851. 

^ The portion in parenthesis was erased, Mr. Borrow writing 
over it what follows with his own hand. 



MR. AND MRS. GEORGE BORROW 135 

Is that calumny to be still permitted to go unanswered? ^ 
(The following in Sorrow's handwriting.) 

If these suggestions are attended to, well and good; if 
not Mr. Borrow can bide his time. He is independent of 
the public and of everybody. Say no more on that Eussian 
subject. Mr. Borrow has had quite enough of the Press. 
If he wrote a book on Russia, it would be said to be like 
the Bihle in Spain, or it would be said to be unlike the 
Bible in Spain, and would be blamed in either case. He 
has written a book in connexion with England such as no 
other body could have written, and he now rests from his 
labours. He has found England an ungrateful country. 
It owes much to him, and he owes nothing to it. If he 
had been a low ignorant impostor, like a person he could 
name, he would have been employed and honoured. 

(In the handwriting of Mrs. B.)— I remain— Yours 

sincerely, 

Mary Borrow. 

* No calumny at all (writes Dr. Knapp), but a natural in- 
ference, and one which Mr. Murray and Mr. Woodfall both noted 
in their letters to Borrow, before the reviewers proclaimed it. 



V 
The Artist and His Art 



The general intention of "The Faery Queen." 

Edmund Spenser ( 1552 f -1599) 

" The chief end I propose to myself in all my labours, is to vex 
the world." 

Dean Swift (1667-1745) 

An author's contempt for contemporary authors. 

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) 

He believes in himself. 

William Blake (1757-1827) 

How he came to write " The Lay of the Last Minstrel." 

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) 

Elia paints for a Quaker friend the joys of living by literature. 

Charles Lamb (1775-1835) 

Sneering at the British public. 

Lord Byron (1788-1824) 

Confident of his future fame. 

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 

England's greatest lyric poet explains his art. 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

The pleasures of literature and state-craft compared. 

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) 

Agonising over Cromwell's letters. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 

How Athens taught her historians to write. 

Edward FitzOerald (1809-1883) 

What it means to be a painter. 

James Smetham (1821-1889) 

He is content to watch the Galley of Fame go by. — But why is 
not Dante Gabriel Rossetti aboard? 

James Smetham T1821-1889) 

Uttering his heart about the public — and some other things 
beside. 

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 



The General Intention of " The Faery Queen " 

Edmund Spenser to Sir Walter Raleigh 

Januarie 23, 1589. 
Sir.— 

Knowing how doubtfully all Allegories may be con- 
strued, and the booke of mine, which I have entituled The 
Faery Queene, being a continued Allegoric, or darke con- 
ceit, I have thought good, as well for avoyding of jealous 
opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light 
in reading thereof, (being so by you commanded) to dis- 
cover unto you the generall intention and meaning, which 
in the whole course thereof I have fashioned, without ex- 
pressing of any particular purposes, or by-accidents therein 
occasioned. The generall end therefore of all the booke, is 
to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and 
gentle discipline. Which for that I conceived shoulde be 
most plausible and pleasing, beeing coloured with an his- 
toricall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to 
read, rather for varietie of matter than for profit of the 
ensample: I chose the historic of king Arthure, as most 
fit for the excellencie of his person, beeing made famous by 
many men's former workes, and also furthest from the 
danger of envie, and suspicion of present time. In which 
I have followed all the antique poets historicall: first 
Homer, who in the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses 
hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the 
one in his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis: then Virgil, 
whose like intention was to doe in the person of ^neas: 
after him Ariosto comprised them both in his Orlando : and 

139 



140 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parts 
in two persons, namely, that part which they in philosophy 
call Etliice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his 
Einaldo; the other named Politice, in his Godfredo. By 
ensample of which excellent Poets, I labour to pourtraict 
in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave 
knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as 
Aristotle hath devised; the which is the purpose of these 
first twelve bookes : which if I finde to be well accepted, I 
may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of 
the pollitike vertues in his person, after he came to bee 
king. 

To some, I know, this Methode will seem displeasant, 
which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in 
way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then 
thus clowidly enwrapped in AUegoricall devises. But 
such, mee seeme, should be satisfied with the use of these 
dayes, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and 
nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to 
common sense. For this cause is Xenophon preferred be- 
fore Plato, for that the one, in the exquisite depth of Ms 
judgment, formed a Communewealth such as it should be; 
but the other, in the person of Cyrus and the Persians, 
fashioned a government, such as might best be. So much 
profitable and gracious is doctrine by ensample then by 
rule. So have I laboured to doe in the person of Arthure : 
whom I conceive, after his long education by Timon (to 
whom he was by Merlin delivered to be brought up, so 
soone as he was borne of the Lady Igrayne) to have scene 
in a dreame or vision the Faery Queene, with whose 
excellent beautie ravished, hee awaking, resolved to seeke 
her out: and so, being by Merlin armed, and by Timon 
thoroughly instructed, he went to seeke her forth in Faery 
land. 



DEAN SWIFT 141 



" The Chief End I Propose to Myself in all My 
Labours, is to Vex the World '* 

Dean Swift to Alexander Pope 

September 29, 1725. 

I have employed my time (besides ditching) in finishing, 
correcting, amending, and transcribing my Travels {Gulli- 
vers), in four parts complete, newly augmented and in- 
tended for the press when the world shall deserve them, or 
rather when a printer shall be found brave enough to ven- 
ture his ears. I like the scheme of our meeting after 
distresses and dispersions. 

But the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours, 
is to vex the world, rather than divert it; and if I could 
compass that design without hurting my own person or 
fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have 
ever seen without reading. I am exceedingly pleased that 
you have done with translations. Lord Treasurer Oxford 
often lamented that a rascally world should lay you under 
a necessity of misemploying your genius for so long a time. 
But since you will now be so much better employed, when 
you think of the world, give it one lash the more at my 
request. 

I have ever hated all nations, professions, and com- 
munities; and all my love is towards individuals. 

For instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers; but I love 
Counsellor Such-a-one, and Judge Such-a-one. 

It is so with physicians. I will not speak of my own 
trade, soldiers, English, Scotch, French, and the rest. 

But principally I hate and detest that animal called 
man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so 
forth. This is the system upon which I have governed 



142 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

myself many years (but do not tell), and so I shall go on 
until I have done with them. 

I have got materials toward a treatise proving the falsity 
of that definition animal rationale, and to show it should 
be only rationis capax. Upon this great foundation of 
misanthropy (though not in Timon's manner) the whole 
building of my travels is erected; and I never will have 
peace of mind till all honest men are of my opinion. 

By consequence you are to embrace it immediately, and 
procure that all who deserve my esteem may do so too. 

The matter is so clear, that it will admit of no dispute; 
nay, I will hold a hundred pounds that you and I agree in 
the point. 

An Author's Contempt for Contemporary Authors 

Horace Walpole to 

Arlington Street, April 27, 1773. 
Mr. Gough wants to be introduced to me ! Indeed ! I 
would see him, as he has been mid-wife to Masters ;' but he 
is so dull that he would only be troublesome — and besides, 
you know I shun authors, and would never have been one 
myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company. They 
are always in earnest, and think their profession serious, 
and will dwell upon trifles, and reverence learning. I 
laugh at all these things, and write only to laugh at them 
and divert myself. None of us are authors of any conse- 
quence, and it is the. most ridiculous of all vanities to be 
vain of being mediocre. A page in a great author humbles 
me to the dust, and the conversation of those that are not 
superior to myself reminds me of what will be thought of 

^Robert Masters, historian and antiquarian (1713-98). In 
1771, he published Some Remarks on Mr. Walpole's Historic 
Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III. 



HORACE WALPOLE 143 

myself. I blush to flatter them; or to be flattered by 
them ; and should dread letters being published some time 
or other, in which they would relate our interviews, and 
we should appear like those puny conceited witlings in 
Shenstone's and Hughes's correspondence, who give them- 
selves airs from being in possession of the soil of Parnassus 
for the time being ; as peers are proud because they enjoy 
the estates of great men who went before them. Mr. 
Gough is very welcome to see Strawberry-hill, or I would 
help him to any scraps in my possession that would assist 
his publications, though he is one of those industrious who 
are only re-burying the dead — ^but I cannot be acquainted 
with him; it is contrary to my system and my humour; 
and besides I know nothing of barrows and Danish en- 
trenchments, and Saxon barbarisms and Phoenician char- 
acters — in short, I know nothing of those ages that knew 
nothing— then how should I be of use to modern literati? 
All the Scotch metaphysicians have sent me their works. 
I did not read one of them, because I do not understand 
what is not understood by those that write about it ; and I 
did not get acquainted with one of the writers. I should 
like to be intimate with Mr. Anstey," even though he wrote 
Lord Buchhorse, or with the author of the Heroic Epistle — 
I have no thirst to know the rest of my contemporaries, 
from the absurd bombast of Dr. Johnson down to the silly 
Dr. Goldsmith, though the latter changeling has had bright 
gleams of parts, and the former had sense, till he changed 
it for words, and sold it for a pension. Don't think me 
scornful. Eecollect that I have seen Pope, and lived with 
Gray. Adieu ! 



* Christopher Anstey, author of the New Bath Guide. Among 
other works Anstey published The Patriot, a " Pindaric Epistle " 
on prize-fighting, addressed to Buckhorse, a notorious bruiser. 



144 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

He Believes in Himself 

William Blake to Thomas Butts 

Felpham, November 22, 1802. 

Dear Sir^ — My brother tells me that he fears you are 
offended with me. I fear so too, because there appears 
some reason why you might be so ; but when you have heard 
me out, you will not be so. 

I have now given two years to the intense study of those 
parts of the art which relate to light and shade and colour, 
and am convinced that either my understanding is in- 
capable of comprehending the beauties of colouring, or tlie 
pictures which I painted for you are equal in every part 
of the art, and superior in one, to anything that has been 
done since the age of Raphael. 

All Sir J. Reynolds' Discourses to the Royal Academy 
will show that the Venetian finesse in art can never be 
united with the majesty of colouring necessary to historical 
beauty ; and in a letter to the Rev. Mr. Gilpin, author of a 
work on picturesque scenery, he says thus : 

^^ It may be worth consideration whether the epithet 
picturesque is not applicable to the excellences of the in- 
ferior schools rather than to the higher." 

" The works of Michael Angelo, Raphael, etc., appear 
to me to have nothing of it; whereas Rubens and the 
Venetian painters may almost be said to have nothing 
else." 

^^ Perhaps picturesque is somewhat synon5rn[ious to the 
word taste, which we should think improperly applied to 
Homer or Milton, but very well to Prior or Pope. I sus- 
pect that the application of these words is to excellences 
of an inferior order, and which are incompatible with the 
grand style. You are certainly right in saying that variety 



WILLIAM BLAKE 145 

of tints and forms is picturesque ; but it must be remem- 
bered, on the other hand, that the reverse of this {uniform- 
ity of colour and a long continuation of lines) produces 
grandeur." 

So says Sir Joshua, and so say I ; for I have now proved 
that the parts of the art which I neglected to display, in 
those little pictures and drawings which I had the pleasure 
and profit to do for you, are incompatible with the designs. 

There is nothing in the art which our painters do that 
I can confess myself ignorant of. I also know and under- 
stand, and can assuredly affirm, that the works I have done 
for you are equal to the Caracci or Eaphael (and I am now 
some years older than Eaphael was when he died) . I say 
they are equal to Caracci or Eaphael, or else I am blind, 
stupid, ignorant, and incapable, in two years' study, to 
understand those things which a boarding-school miss can 
comprehend in a fortnight. Be assured, my dear friend, 
that there is not one touch in those drawings and pictures 
but what came from my head and my heart in unison ; that 
I am proud of being their author, and grateful to you my 
employer; and that I look upon you as the chief of my 
friends, whom I would endeavour to please, because you, 
among all men, have enabled me to produce these things. 
I would not send you a drawing or a picture till I had 
again reconsidered my notions of art, and had put myself 
back as if I was a learner. 

I have proved that I am right, and shall now go on with 
the vigour I was, in my childhood, famous for. But I do 
not pretend to be perfect: yet, if my works have faults, 
Caracci's, Correggio's, and Eaphael's have faults also. 

Let me observe that the yellow-leather flesh of old men, 
the ill-drawn and ugly old women, and, above all, the 
daubed black-and-yellow shadows that are found in most 
fine, ay, and the finest pictures, I altogether reject as 



146 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

ruinous to effect, though connoisseurs may think otherwise. 

Let me also notice that Caracci's pictures are not like 
Correggio's, nor Correggio's like Raphael's ; and^ if neither 
of them was to be encouraged till he did like any of the 
others, he must die without encouragement. My pictures 
are unlike any of these painters, and I would have them 
to be so. I think the manner I adopt more perfect than 
any other. No doubt they thought the same of theirs. 
You will be tempted to think that, as I improve, the pic- 
tures, etc., that I did for you are not what I would now 
wish them to be. 

On this I beg to say that they are what I intended them, 
and that I know I never shall do better; for, if I were to 
do them over again, they would lose as much as they 
gained, because they were done in the heat of my spirits. 

But you will justly inquire why I have not written all 
this time to you. I answer I have been very unhappy, and 
could not think of troubling you about it, or any of my 
real friends. (I have written many letters to you which I 
burned and did not send.) And why I have not before 
now finished the miniature I promised to Mrs. Butts, I 
answer I have not, till now, in any degree pleased myself, 
and now I must entreat you to excuse faults, for portrait- 
painting is the direct contrary to designing and historical 
painting, in every respect. 

If you have not nature before you for every touch, you 
cannot paint portrait; and if you have nature before you 
at all, you cannot paint history. It was Michael Angelo's 
opinion, and is mine. 

Pray give my wife's love with mine to Mrs. Butts. 
Assure her that it cannot be long before I have the pleasure 
of painting from you in person, and then she may expect a 
likeness. But now I have done all I could, and know she 
will forgive any failure in consideration of the endeavour. 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 147 

And now let me finish with assuring you that, though 
I have been very unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again 
emerged into the light of day; I still and shall to eternity 
embrace Christianity, and adore Him who is the express 
image of God; but I have travelled through perils and 
darkness not unlike a champion. I have conquered, and 
shall go on conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury 
of my course among the stars of God and in the abysses of 
the accuser. 

My enthusiasm is still what it was, only enlarged and 
confirmed. 

I now send two pictures, and hope you will approve of 
them. 

I have enclosed the account of money received and work 
done, which I ought long ago to have sent you. Pray for- 
give errors in omissions of this kind. I am incapable of 
many attentions which it is my duty to observe towards 
you, through multitude of employment, and through hope 
of soon seeing you again. I often omit to inquire of you, 
but pray let me now hear how you do, and of the welfare of 
your family. 

Accept my sincere love and respect. — I remain yours 
sincerely, 

William Blake. 

How He Came to Write " The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel " 

Sir Walter Scott to Miss Seward 

Edinburgh, March 21, 1805. 
My dear Miss Seward^ — 

I am truly happy that you found any amusement in the 
Lay of the Last Minstrel. It has great faults, of which no 
one can be more sensible than I am myself. Above all, it 



148 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

is deficient in that sort of continuity which a story ought to 
have, and which, were it to be written again, I would 
endeavour to give it. But I began and wandered forward, 
like one in a pleasant country, getting to the top of one 
hill to see a prospect, and to the bottom of another to 
enjoy a shade; and what wonder if my course has been 
devious and desultory, and many of my excursions alto- 
gether unprofitable to the advance of my journey? The 
Dwarf Page is also an excrescence, and I plead guilty to 
all the censures concerning him. The truth is, he has a 
history, and it is this: — The story of Gilpin Horner was 
told by an old gentleman to Lady Dalkeith, and she, much 
diverted with his actually believing so grotesque a tale, 
insisted that I should make it into a Border ballad. I 
don't know if ever you saw my lovely chieftainess — if you 
have, you must be aware that it is impossible for any one 
to refuse her request, and she has more of the angel in face 
and temper than any one alive ; so that if she had asked me 
to write a ballad on a broomstick, I must have attempted it. 
I began a few verses to be called the Goblin Page; and 
they lay long by me, till the applause of some friends whose 
judgment I valued induced me to resume the poem, so on 
I wrote, knowing no more than the man in the moon how I 
was to end. At length the story appeared so uncouth, that 
I was fain to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest 
the nature of it should be misunderstood, and I should be 
suspected of setting up a new school of poetry, instead of 
a feeble attempt to imitate the old. In the process of the 
romance, the page, intended to be a principal person in the 
work, contrived (from the baseness of his natural propensi- 
ties, I suppose) to slink downstairs into the kitchen, and 
now he must e'en abide there. 

I mention these circumstances to you, and to any one 
whose applause I value, because I am unwilling you should 



CHARLES LAMB 149 

suspect me of trifling with the public in malice prepense. 
As to the herd of critics, it is impossible for me to pay 
much attention to them; for, as they do not understand 
what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each 
other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to 
be a sort of thinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, 
set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make 
two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether 
redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with 
the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at 
an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my 
page still on my hands, and must get rid of them at all 
events. Manage them as I would, their catastrophe must 
have been insufficient to occupy an entire canto; so I was 
fain to eke it out with songs of the Minstrels. I will now 
descend from the confessional, which I think I have occu- 
pied long enough for the patience of my fair confessor. I 
am happy you are disposed to give me absolution, notwith- 
standing all my sins. 

Elia Paints for a Quaker Friend the Joys of Living 
BY Literature 

Cliarles Lamh to Bernard Barton ^ 

January 9, 1823. 

Throw yourself on the world without any rational plan 
of support, beyond what the chance employ of booksellers 
would afford you ! 

Throw yourself rather, my dear sir, from the steep 

* Bernard Barton (1784-1849), the Quaker poet of Woodbridge, 
who was at this time thinking of forsaking the bank-clerkship 
which he held in favour of authorship. Charles Lamb dissuaded 
him. He remained a bank-clerk until within two days of his 
death. 



150 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

Tarpeian rock, slap-dash headlong upon iron spikes. If 
you have but five consolatory minutes between the desk and 
the bed, make much of them, and live a century in them, 
rather than turn slave to the booksellers. They are Turks 
and Tartars when they have poor authors at their beck. 
Hitherto you have been at arm's length from them. Come 
not within their grasp. I have known many authors want 
for bread, some repining, others enjoying the blessed 
security of a spunging-house, all agreeing they had rather 
have been tailors, weavers-what-not ? rather than the things 
they were. I have known some starved, some to go mad, 
one dear friend literally dying in a workhouse. You know 
not what a rapacious set these booksellers are. Ask even 
Southey, who (a single case almost) has made a fortune by 
book drudgery, what he has found them. you know not, 
may you never know, the miseries of subsisting by author- 
ship. 'Tis a pretty appendage to a situation like yours or 
mine; but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a book- 
seller's dependant, to drudge your brains for pots of ale, 
and breasts of mutton, to change your FREE THOUGHTS 
and VOLUNTARY NUMBERS for ungracious TASK- 
WORK. The booksellers hate us. The reason I take to 
be, that contrary to other trades, in which the master gets 
all the credit (a jeweller or silversmith for instance), and 
the journeyman, who really does the fine work, is in the 
back-ground ; in our work the world gives all the credit to 
us, whom they consider as their journeymen, and there- 
fore do they hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and 
would wring the blood of us out, to put another sixpence 
in their mechanic pouches. 

Keep to your bank, and the bank will keep you. Trust 
not to the public; you may hang, starve, drown yourself 
for anything that worthy personage cares. I bless every 



LORD BYRON 151 

star, thaf Providence, not seeing good to make me indepen- 
dent, has seen it next good to settle upon me the stable 
foundation of Leadenhall." Sit down, good B.B., in the 
banking-ofhce ; what! is there not from six to eleven, P.M. 
six days in the week, and is there not all Sunday? Fie, 
what a superfluity of man's time, if you could think so! 
Enough for relaxation, mirth, converse, poetry, good 
thoughts, quiet thoughts. Oh, the corroding, torturing, 
tormenting thoughts that disturb the brain of the unlucky 
wight, who must draw upon it for daity sustenance! 
Henceforth I retract all my fond complaints of mercantile 
employment; look upon them as lovers' quarrels. I was 
but half in earnest. Welcome dead timber of the desk, 
that gives me life. A little grumbling is a wholesome 
medicine for the spleen, but in my inner heart do I approve 
and embrace this our close, but unharassing way of life. I 
am quite serious. If you, can send me Fox, I will not keep 
it six weeks, and will return it, with warm thanks to your- 
self and friend, without blot or dog's-ear. 

Yours truly 

C. Lamb. 

Sneering at the British Public 

Lord Byron to John Murray 

Venice, April 6, 1819. 
I mean to write my best work in Italian, and it will take 
me nine years more thoroughly to master the Language; 
and then, if my fancy exist, and I exist too, I will try what 
I can do really. As to the estimation of the English which 
you talk of, let them calculate what it is worth before they 
insult me with their insolent condescension. 

* The East India House, where Charles Lamb was employed. 



152 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

I have not written for their pleasure. If they are 
pleased, it is that they choose to be so; I have never flat- 
tered their opinions, nor their pride; nor will I. Neither 
will I make " Ladies '' books : al dilettar le femine e la 
plehe. I have written from the fulness of my mind, from 
passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not for 
their " sweet voices." 

I know the precise worth of popular applause, for few 
scribblers have had more of it; and if I chose to swerve 
into their paths, I could retain it, or resume it. But I 
neither love ye nor fear ye ; and though I buy with ye, and 
sell with ye, and talk with ye, I will neither eat with ye, 
drink with ye, nor pray with ye. They made me, without 
my search, a species of popular idol; they, without reason 
or judgment, beyond the caprice of their good pleasure, 
threw down the image from its pedestal ; it was not broken 
with the fall, and they would, it seems, again replace it, — 
but they shall not. 

Confident of His Future Fame 

William Wordsworth to Lady Beaumont 

Coleorton, May 21, 1807. 
My dear Lady Beaumont, — 

Though I am to see you so soon, I cannot but write a word 
or two, to thank you for the interest you take in my poems, 
as evinced by your solicitude about their immediate recep- 
tion. I write partly to thank you for this, and to express 
the pleasure it has given me, and partly to remove any 
uneasiness from your mind which the disappointments you 
sometimes meet with, in this labour of love, may occasion. 
I see that you have many battles to fight for me — more 
than, in the ardour and confidence of your pure and ele- 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 15S 

vated mind, you have ever thought of being summoned to; 
but be assured that this opposition is nothing more than 
what 1 distinctly foresaw that you and my other friends 
would have to encounter. I say this, not to give myself 
credit for an eye of prophecy, but to allay any vexatious 
thoughts on my account which this opposition may have 
produced in you. 

It is impossible that any expectations can be lower than 
mine concerning the immediate effect of this little work 
upon what is called the public. I do not here take into 
consideration that envy and malevolence, and all the bad 
passions which always stand in the way of a work of any 
merit from a living poet; but merely think of the pure, 
absolute, honest ignorance, in which aU worldlings of every 
rank and situation must be enveloped, with respect to the 
thoughts, feelings and images on which the life of my 
poems depend. The things which I have taken, whether 
from within or without, what have they to do with routs, 
dinners, morning calls, hurry from door to door, from 
street to street, on foot or in carriage; with Mr. Pitt or 
Mr. Fox, Mr. Paul or Sir Francis Burdett, the West- 
minster election or the borough of Honiton? In a word 
— for I. cannot stop to make my way through the hurry of 
images that present themselves to me — what have they to 
do with the endless talking about things nobody cares any- 
thing for except as far as their own vanity is concerned? 
— what have they to do (to say all at once) with a life with- 
out love ? In such a life there can be no thought ; for we 
have no thought (save thoughts of pain) but as far as we 
have love and admiration. 

It is an awful truth, that there neither is, nor can be, 
any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of 
the twenty of those persons who live, or wish to live, in the 
broad light of the world — among those who either are, or 



154 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in 
society. This is a truth, and an awful one, because to be 
incapable of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is 
to be without love of human nature and reverence for God. 

Upon this I shall insist elsewhere ; at present let me con- 
fine myself to my object; which is to make you, my dear 
friend, as easy-hearted as myself with respect to these 
poems. Trouble not yourself upon their present recep- 
tion; of what moment is that compared with what I trust 
is their destiny? — to console the afflicted; to add sunshine 
to daylight, by making the happy happier; to teach the 
young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and 
feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely 
virtuous ; this is their office, which I trust they will faith- 
fully perform, long after we (that is, all that is mortal 
to us) are mouldered in our graves. I am well aware how 
far it would seem to many I overrate my own exertions, 
when I speak in this way, in direct connexion with the 
volume which I have just made public. 

I am not, however, afraid of such censure, insignificant 
as probably the majority of those poems would appear to 
very respectable persons. I do not mean London wits and 
witlings, for these have too many foul passions about them 
to be respectable, even if they had more intellect than the 
benign laws of Providence will allow to such a heartless 
existence as theirs is; but grave, kindly-natured, worthy 
persons, who would be pleased if they could. I hope that 
these volumes are not without some recommendations, even 
for readers of this class: but their imagination has slept; 
and the voice which is the voice of the poetry, without 
imagination, cannot be heard. . . . 

My letter (as this second sheet, which I am obliged to 
take, admonished me) is growing to an enormous length; 
and yet, saving that I have expressed my calm confidence 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 155 

that these poems will live, I have said nothing which has 
a particular application to the object of it, which was to 
remove all disquiet from your mind on account of the con- 
demnation they may at present incur from the portion of 
my contemporaries who are called the public. I am sure, 
my dear Lady Beaumont, if you attach any importance to 
it, it can only be from an apprehension that it may affect 
me, upon which I have already set you at ease; or from a 
fear that this present blame is ominous of their future or 
final destiny. If this be the case, your tenderness for me 
betrays you. Be assured that the decision of these persons 
has nothing to do with the question; they are altogether 
incompetent judges. These people in the senseless hurry 
of their idle lives, do not read books, they merely snatch a 
glance at them that they may talk about them. And even 
if it were not so, never forget what, I believe, was observed 
to you by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, 
in proportion as he is great or original, must himself cre- 
ate the taste by which he is to be relished; he must teach 
the art by which he is to be seen ; this, in a certain degree, 
even to all persons, however wise and pure may be their 
lives, and however unvitiated their taste. But for those 
w^ho dip into books in order to give an opinion of them, or 
talk about them to take up an opinion — for this multitude 
of unhappy and misguided, and misguiding beings, an en- 
tire regeneration must be produced ; and if this be possible, 
it must be a work of time. To conclude, my ears are stone- 
dead to this idle buzz, and my flesh as insensible as iron to 
these petty stings; and, after what I have said, I am sure 
yours will be the same. I doubt not that you will share 
with me an invincible confidence that my writings (and 
among them these little poems) will co-operate with the 
benign tendencies in human nature and society, wherever 
found ; and that they will in their degree, be efficacious in 



156 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

making men wiser, better, and happier. Farewell. I will 
not apologize for this letter, though its length demands an 
apology. Believe me, eagerly wishing for the happy day 
when I shall see you and Sir George here. 

Most affectionately yours, 

W. Wordsworth. 



England's Greatest Lyric Poet Explains His Art 

John Keats to John Taylor 

Hampstead 
37 February [1818] 

In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far 
I am from their centre. 

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and 
not by singularity ; it should strike the reader as a wording 
of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remem- 
brance. 

2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, 
thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. 
The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like 
the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set 
soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the lux- 
ury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry 
should be, than to write it. And this leads me to 

Another axiom — That if poetry comes not as naturally 
as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. — 
However it may be with me, I cannot help looking into 
new countries with " for a muse of Fire to ascend ! '^ If 
*^ Endymion " serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to 
be content^ — I have great reason to be content, for thank 
God I can read, and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his 
depths; and I have I am sure many friends, who, if I fail, 



LORD MACAULAY 157 

will attribute any change in my life and temper to humble- 
ness rather than pride — to a cowering under the wings of 
great poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appre- 
ciated. I am anxious to get "Endymion" printed that 
I may forget it and proceed. 

The Pleasures of Literature and State-Craft 
Compared 

Lord Macaulay to Thomas Flower Ellis 

Calcutta, December 30, 1835. 

I am in excellent health. So are my sister and brother- 
in-law, and their little girl, whom I am always nursing; 
and of whom I am becoming fonder than a wise man, with 
half my experience, would choose to be of anything except 
himself. I have but very lately begun to recover my 
spirits. The tremendous blow which fell on me at the be- 
ginning of this year has left marks behind it which I shall 
carry to my grave. Literature has saved my life and my 
reason. Even now, I dare not, in the intervals of business, 
remain alone for a minute without a book in my hand. 
Wliat my course of life will be, when I return to England, 
is very doubtful. But I am more than half determined to 
abandon politics, and to give myself wholly to letters; to 
undertake some great historical work^ which may be at 
once the business and the amusement of my life; and to 
leave the pleasures of pestiferous rooms, sleepless nights, 
aching heads, and diseased stomachs to Koebuck and to 
Praed. 

In England I might probably be of a very different opin- 
ion. But, in the quiet of my own little grass-plot, — when 

^ The History of England from the Accession of James the 
Second. 



158 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

the moon, at its rising, finds me with the Philoctetes or the 
De Finibns in my hand, — I often wonder what strange 
infatuation leads men who can do something better to 
squander their intellect, their health, their energy, on such 
subjects as those which most statesmen are engaged in pur- 
suing. I comprehend perfectly how a man who can de- 
bate, but who would make a very indifferent figure as a 
contributor to an annual or a magazine, — such a man as 
Stanley, for example, — should take the only line by which 
he can attain distinction. But that a man before whom 
the two paths of literature and politics lie open, and who 
might hope for eminence in either, should choose politics, 
and quit literature, seems to me madness. On the one side 
is health, leisure, peace of mind, the search after truth, and 
all the enjoyments of friendship and conversation. On the 
other side is almost certain ruin to the constitution, con- 
stant labour, constant anxiety. Every friendship which a 
man may have, becomes precarious as soon as he engages in 
politics. As to abuse, men soon become callous to it, but 
the discipline which makes them callous is very severe. 
And for what is it that a man who might, if he chose, rise 
and lie down at his own hour, engage in any study, enjoy 
any amusement, and visit any place, consents to make 
himself as much a prisoner as if he were within the rules 
of the Fleet; to be tethered during eleven months of the 
year within the circle of half a mile round Charing Cross ; 
to sit, or stand, night after night for ten or twelve hours, 
inhaling a noisome atmosphere, and listening to harangues 
of which nine-tenths are far below the level of a leading 
article in a newspaper? For what is it that he submits, 
day after day, to see the morning break over the Thames, 
and then totters home, with bursting temples, to his bed? 
Is it for fame? Who would compare the fame of Charles 
Townshend to that of Hume, that of Lord North to that 



LORD MACAULAY 159 

of Gibbon, that of Lord Chatham to that of Johnson? 
Who can look back on the life of Burke and not regret 
that the years which he passed in ruining his health and 
temper by political exertions were not passed in the compo- 
sition of some great and durable work? Who can read 
the letters to Atticus, and not feel that Cicero would have 
been an infinitely happier and better man, and a not less 
celebrated man, if he had left us fewer speeches, and more 
Academic Questions and Tusculan Disputations; if he had 
passed the time which he spent in brawling with Vatinius 
and Clodius in producing a history of Rome superior even 
to that of Livy? But these, as I said, are meditations in a 
quiet garden, situated far beyond the contagious influence 
of English faction. What I might feel if I again saw 
Downing Street and Palace Yard is another question. I 
tell you sincerely my present feelings. 

I have cast up my reading account, and brought it to 
the end of the year 1835. It includes December 1834; 
for I came into my house and unpacked my books at the 
end of November 1834. During the last thirteen months I 
have read ^schylus twice ; Sophocles twice ; Euripides once ; 
Pindar twice; Callimachus; Apollonius Rhodius; Quintus 
Calaber; Theocritus twice; Herodotus; Thucydides; 
almost all Xenophon's works ; almost all Plato ; Aristotle's 
Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides dipping 
elsewhere in him; the whole of Plutarch's Lives; about 
half of Lucian; two or three books of Athenseus; Plautus 
twice ; Terence twice ; Lucretius twice ; Catullus ; Tibullus ; 
Propertius; Lucan; Statins; Silius Italicus; Livy; Vel- 
leius Paterculus; Sallust; Cassar; and, lastly, Cicero. I 
have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left ; but I shall finish 
him in a few days. I am now deep in Aristophanes and 
Lucian. Of Aristophanes I think as I always thought; 
but Lucian has agreeably surprised me. At school I read 



160 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

some of his Dialogues of the Dead when I was thirteen; 
and, to my shame, I never, to the best of my belief, read a 
line of him since. I am charmed with him. His style 
seems to me to be superior to that of any extant writer 
who lived later than the age of Demosthenes and Theo- 
phrastus. He has a most peculiar and delicious vein of 
humour. It is not the humour of Aristophanes; it is not 
that of Plato : and yet it is akin to both ; — not quite equal, 
I admit, to either, but still exceedingly charming. I 
hardly know where to find an instance of a writer, in the 
decline of a literature, who has shown an invention so 
rich, and a taste so pure. But, if I get on these matters, 
I shall fill sheet after sheet. They must wait till we take 
another long walk, or another tavern dinner, together; 
that is, till the summer of 1838. 



Agonising Over Cromwell's Letters 

TJiomas Carlyle to John Sterling 

Chelsea, December 4, 1843. 

I am very miserable at present; or call it heavy-laden 
with fruitless toil, which will have much the same mean- 
ing. My abode is, and has been, figuratively speaking, in 
the centre of chaos. Onwards there is no moving in any 
yet discovered line, and where I am is no abiding — miser- 
able enough. 

The fact is, without any figure, I am doomed to write 
some book about that unblessed Commonwealth, and as yet 
there will no book show itself possible. The whole stag- 
nancy of the English genius two hundred years thick lies 
heavy on me. Dead heroes buried under two centuries of 
Atheism seem to whimper pitifully, " Deliver us ! Canst 
thou not deliver us?'^ And alas! what am I, or what is 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 161 

my father's house? Confound it! I have lost four years 
of good labour in the business ; and still the more I depend 
on it, it is like throwing good labour after bad. On the 
whole, you ought to pity me. Is thy servant a dead dog 
that these things have fallen on him? My only consola- 
tion is that I am struggling to be the most conservative 
man in England, or one of the most conservative. If the 
past times, only two centuries back, lie wholly a torpedo 
darkness and dulness, freezing as with Medusa glance all 
souls of men that look on it, where are our foundations 
gone? If the past time cannot become melodious, it must 
be forgotten, as good as annihilated ; and we rove like aim- 
less exiles that have no ancestors, whose world began only 
yesterday. That must be my consolation, such as it is. 

I see almost nobody. I avoid sight rather, and study to 
consume my own smoke. I wish among your buildings 
you would build me some small Prophet's chamber, fifteen 
feet square, with a separate garret and a flue for smoking, 
within a furlong of your big house, sacred from all noises 
of dogs, cocks, pianofortes, insipid men, engaging some 
dumb old woman to light a fire for me daily and boil some 
kind of kettle. 



How Athens Taught Her Historians to Write 

Edward FitzGerald to E. B. Cow ell 

Boulge, Wednesday 

Jan. 25th, 1848. 
I have just finished, all but the last three chapters of 
the fourth Book of Thucydides, and it is now no task to 
me to go on. This fourth book is the most interesting I 
have read ; containing all that blockade of Pylos ; that first 
great thumping of the Athenians at Oropus, after which 



162 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

they for ever dreaded the Theban troops. And it came 
upon me " come stella in ciel/' when, in the account of the 
taking of Amphipolis, Thucydides/ of ravta ^vveypaipevj 
comes with seven ships to the rescue ! Eancy old Hallam 
sticking to his gun at a Martello tower ! This was the way 
to write well ; and this was the way to make literature re- 
spectable. Oh, Alfred Tennyson, could you but have the 
luck to be put to such employment ! No man would do it 
better; a more heroic figure to head the defenders of his 
country could not be. 

What it Means to be a Painter 

James Smetham to 

Surely few persons have any idea of what it is to be a 
painter ; where first of all the mind within is taxed to con- 
ceive, to feel, to suffer, or excitedly to enjoy every new 
subject, and then has to search the earth over for ever-new 
materials to enable it to realise the idea, materials lying 
wide apart in the most different associations. The 
scholar has his library round about him. Southey can 
spend his fourteen hours a day with his books, far removed 
among the lakes, going his mountain walk at his appointed 
hour. The painter can do no such thing. He wants a 
gourd : he goes to Kew, and spends his day, but the gourd 
is not growing, and his picture will be at the exhibition 
before the gourd blossoms. He wants a costume, and has 
to find it, and haggle about it with a Jew, or hunt through 
Marlborough House Library for it. He wants a sailor's 
head, and goes to St. George's in the East, not easily to find 
it; to walk much and idle about much, and then only im- 
perfectly to accomplish his object. Th© primroses for his 

^IV., 104. 



JAMES SMETHAM 163 

bank blow in the woods of Kent, and the anemones and 
hyacinths. The mill wheel turns slumberously round 
miles and miles away in another direction. The bit of 
wild wood scenery is accessible with trouble and expense, 
but the weather — just when he has time — is gray and cold, 
and the east wind prevails. It would be the risking of 
his life to paint as he desires, that ashy gray and green 
tree root, because he has already a cold, and the ground 
is damp ; and yet his picture would be engemmed by it, and 
he hankers after it. The golden day arrives when he 
would go into the woods, but the primroses are dead, the 
hyacinths drooping, or the fancy picture must be put on 
one side for the more remunerative portrait. 

Carry out this train of thought, and you will wonder 
how a complex picture gets painted at all. 

He is Content to Watch the Galley of Fame Go 

By. — But Why is not Dante Gabriel 

RossETTi Aboard .f^ 



James Smetham to 



m. May, 1874. 
The conditioning of English art has come to be dra- 
matic and striking. The silent brotherhood disperse over 
Europe and further; to Damascus, Cairo, Algiers. They 
go, each apart, to solitary places, and to places desolate of 
old ; to little Italian towns, quaint German villages, Scotch 
glens, bare t^vdlight vales in the Hebrides, and a long hush 
falls upon them. May comes round, and all is changed. 
It is as when we stood in the barge at the Boat-race, only 
instead of the fleeting dream of dark and light blue we 
have a nation lining the banks, restless and glittering, and 
waiting for the galley of Cleopatra as on the Cydnus of 
old. Artillery are in waiting at intervals, and all is ex- 



164 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

pectation. At last comes the golden galley of art high 
out of the water, with regular pulses of silver oars moving 
to "flutes and soft recorders." She reclines in pomp 
under the silken sail swollen to fulness. There is a deck 
above her on which stand in glittering armour, with sash 
and plume, the great painters and sculptors of the year, 
and behind them, but raised on another deck, crowd 
princes, statesmen, warriors fresh from the field, "with 
station like the herald Mercury new-lighted on a heaven- 
kissing hill." Eight beneath you, as it seems, and close 
over you, suddenly burst and boom the guns of fame, and 
shake the air and the earth and you. 

You, what are you doing, at your age, in the empty 
barge moored at the brink? Why are you not on the 
galley? Are you not filled with envy? Will you not 
throw some mud as it passes? No, indeed; I've brought 
three laurel wreaths to throw aboard — one for Millais, one 
for Watts, one for somebody else, I won't say who — settle 
it among yourselves, only don't let Hart get hold of it. 
The only mischief I am inclined for is to put hollow hand to 
mouth like Eossetti's " Hector," and yell out " Where's old 
Brown ? What have you done with Gabriel Eossetti ? Yah ! " 

I've nothing to say against the galley, and cheer with 
the loudest, and shall delight myself with every touch of 
these men, and those also who are not there. 

Still, you know the working of the old problems, and 
each time the galley sails up the Cydnus I am obliged to 
ask my heart the old set of questions, and my heart replies 
with no hesitation as of yore, " I would not have it other- 
wise. If all were to do over again, I would do just the 
same." 

Only I say this with more rest and gladness than ever, 
with more entire contentment, with deeper thankfulness 
to God and to man. 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 165 

Uttering His Heart About the Public — and Some 
Other Things Beside 

Robert Louis Stevenson to Edmund Gosse 

Skerryvore, Bournemouth, Jan. 2nd, 1886. 

That is the hard part of literature. You aim high, and 
you take longer over your work, and it will not be so suc- 
cessful as if you had aimed low and rushed it. What the 
public likes is work (of any kind) a little loosely executed; 
so long as it is a little wordy, a little slack, a little dim and 
knotless, the dear public likes it; it should (if possible) 
be a little dull into the bargain. I know that good work 
sometimes hits; but, with my hand on my heart, I think 
it is by an accident. And I know also that good work 
must succeed at last; but that is not the doing of the 
public; they are only shamed into silence or affectation. 
I do not write for the public; I do write for money, a 
nobler deity; and most of all for myself, not perhaps any 
more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home. 

Let us tell each other sad stories of the bestiality of the 
beasts whom we feed. What he likes is the newspaper; 
and to me the press is the mouth of a sewer, where lying is 
professed as from an university chair, and ever3rthing 
prurient, and ignoble, and essentially dull, finds its abode 
and pulpit. I do not like mankind; but men, and not all 
of these — and fewer women. As for respecting the race, 
and, above all, that fatuous rabble of burgesses called ^' the 
public," God save me from such irreligion ! — that way lies 
disgrace and dishonour. There must be something wrong 
in me, or I would not be popular. 

This is perhaps a trifle stronger than my sedate and 
permanent opinion. Not much, I think. As for the art 
that we practise, I have never been able to see why its pro- 



166 THE ARTIST AND HIS ART 

fessors should be respected. They chose the primrose 
path; when they found it was not all primroses, but some 
of it brambly, and much of it uphill, they began to think 
and to speak of themselves as holy martyrs. But a man is 
never mart3Ted in any honest sense in the pursuit of his 
pleasure ; and delirium tremens has more of the honour of 
the cross. We were full of the pride of life, and chose, 
like prostitutes, to live by a pleasure. We should be paid 
if we give the pleasure we pretend to give ; but why should 
we be honoured ? 

I hope some day you and Mrs. Gosse will come for a 
Sunday; but we must wait till I am able to see people. I 
am very full of Jenkin's life; it is painful, yet very pleas- 
ant, to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at 
every spadeful, shine brighter. I own, as I read, I wonder 
more and more why he should have taken me to be a 
friend. He had many and obvious faults upon the face 
of him; the heart was pure gold. I feel it little pain to 
have lost him, for it is a loss in which I cannot believe ; I 
take it, against reason, for an absence; if not to-day, then 
to-morrow, I still fancy I shall see him in the door; and 
then, now when I know him better, how glad a meeting! 
Yes, if I could believe in the immortality business, the 
world would indeed be too good to be true; but we were 
put here to do what service we can, for honour and not for 
hire : the sods cover us, and the worm that never dies, the 
conscience, sleeps well at last; these are the wages, besides 
w^hat we receive so lavishly day by day; and they are 
enough for a man who knows his own frailty and sees all 
things in the proportion of reality. The soul of piety was 
killed long ago by that idea of reward. Nor is happiness, 
whether eternal or temporal, the reward that mankind 
seeks. Happinesses are but his wayside campings ; his soul 
is in the journey; he was born for the struggle, and only 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 167 

tastes his life in effort and on the condition that he is 
opposed. How, then, is such a creature, so fiery, so pugna- 
cious, so made up of discontent and aspiration, and such 
noble and uneasy passions — how can he be rewarded but by 
rest ? I would not say it aloud ; for man's cherished belief 
is that he loves that happiness which he continually spurns 
and passes by; and this belief in some ulterior happiness 
exactly fits him. He does not require to stop and taste it; 
he can be about the rugged and bitter business where his 
heart lies ; and j^et he can tell himself this fairy tale of an 
eternal tea-party, and enjoy the notion that he is both him- 
self and something else ; and that his friends will yet meet 
him, all ironed out and emasculate, and still be lovable, — 
as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and 
draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness ! But 
the truth is, we must fight until we die; and when we die 
there can be no quiet for mankind but complete resumption 
into — what? — God, let us say — when all these desperate 
tricks will lie spell-bound at last. 

Here came my dinner and cut this sermon short — 
excusez, E. L. S. 



VI 

Literary Verdicts 



Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

Horace Walpole (1717-1797) 
He admires in Dryden his ardour and impetuosity of mind. 

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 
Wordsworth as compared with Milton. 

John Keats (1795-1821) 
A verdict upon the literature of his own age. 

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) 

Congratulating Dickens on " The Christmas Carol." 

Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) 

A lady's opinion of Lord Byron. 

Miss Mitford (1789-1855) 
Byron beyond Wordsworth and Keats beyond them all. 

Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786-1846) 
He returns to his classics and finds in them solace for grief. 

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) 

Wherein Plato is re-discovered and a German professor con- 
demned. 

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) 
" The grand heroic spirit — that trumpet-stop on his organ." 

Charles Lever (1806-1872) 

Those inimitable Dickens touches. 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) 
He revolts against Asceticism. 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) 
A woman and her hero. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) 

The Chinese fidelity and miniature delicacy of Jane Austen. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) 

Arranging the poets in the order of their morality. 

Edward FitzGerdld (1809-1883) 

Sophocles is a pure Greek temple, but ^schylus troubles men 
with his grandeur and his gloom. 

Edicard FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

He is not pleased with " The Idylls of the King." 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

That Scott resembles Homer in the simplicity of his story; and 
that Miss Austen never goes out of the parlour. 

Edioard FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

Literary prejudices, together with an anecdote about his 
" Daddy." 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

" Pauvre et triste humanity." 

Edioard FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

Discovering the Bronte literature. 

James Smetham (1821-1889) 



Boswell's Life of Johnson 

Horace Walpole to Miss Berry 

Berkeley Square, May 26, 1791. 
The rest of my letter must be literary; for we have no 
news. BoswelFs book is gossiping, but, having numbers of 
proper names, would be more readable, at least by me, were 
it reduced from two volumes to one: but there are woful 
longuers, both about his hero and himself, the fidus 
Achates; about whom one has not the smallest curiosity. 
But I wrong the original Achates ; one is satisfied with his 
fidelity in keeping his master^s secrets and weaknesses, 
which modern led-captains betray for their patron's glory 
and to hurt their own enemies; which Boswell has done 
shamefully, particularly against Mrs. Piozzi, and Mrs. 
Montagu, and Bishop Percy. Dr. Blagden says justly, 
that it is a new kind of libel, by which you may abuse any- 
body, by saying some dead person said so and so of some- 
body alive. Often, indeed, Johnson made the most brutal 
speeches to living persons; for though he was good-natured 
at bottom, he was very ill-natured at top. He loved to 
dispute, to show his superiority. If his opponents were 
weak, he told them they were fools; if they vanquished 
him, he was scurrilous — to nobody more than to Boswell 
himself, who was contemptible for flattering him so 
grossly, and for enduring the coarse things he was con- 
tinually vomiting on BoswelFs own country, Scotland. I 
expected, amongst the excommunicated, to find myself, but 
am very gently treated. I never would be in the least 
acquainted with Johnson; or, as Boswell calls it, I had not 

171 



172 LITERARY VERDICTS 

a just value for him ; which the biographer imputes to my 
resentment for the doctor^s putting bad arguments (pur- 
posely, out of Jacobitism) into the speeches which he wrote 
fifty years ago for my father, in the Gentleman's Maga- 
zine; which I did not read then, or ever knew Johnson 
wrote till Johnson died, nor have looked at since. John- 
son's blind Toryism and known brutality kept me aloof; 
nor did I ever exchange a syllable with him : nay, I do not 
think I ever was in the room with him six times in my 
days. Boswell came to me, said Dr. Johnson was writing 
the Lives of the Poets, and wished I would give him anec- 
dotes of Mr. Gray. I said, very coldly, I had given what 
I knew to Mr. Mason. Boswell hummed and hawed and 
then dropped, " I suppose you know Dr. Johnson does not 
admire Mr. Gray." Putting as much contempt as I could 
into my look and tone, I said, "Dr. Johnson don't! — 
humph ! " — and with that monosyllable ended our inter- 
view. After the doctor's death, Burke, Sir Joshua Reyn- 
olds, and Boswell sent an ambling circular-letter to me, 
begging subscriptions for a monument for him — the two 
last, I think, impertinently; as they could not but know 
my opinion, and could not suppose I would contribute to a 
monument for one who had endeavoured, poor soul! to 
degrade my friend's superlative poetry. I would not deign 
to write an answer ; but sent down word by my footman, as 
I would have done to parish officers with a brief, that I 
would not subscribe. In the two new volumes Johnson 
says, and very probably did, or is made to say, that Gray's 
poetry is dull, and that he was a dull man! The same 
oracle dislikes Prior, Swift, and Fielding. If an elephant 
could write a book, perhaps one that had read a great deal 
would say, that an Arabian horse is a very clumsy, ungrace- 
ful animal. Pass to a better chapter. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 173 

He Admires in Dryden His Ardour and Impetu- 
osity OF Mind 

William Wordsworth to Sir Walter Scott 

Patterdale, November 'K, 1805. 
My dear Scott, — 

I was much pleased to hear of your engagement with 
Dryden; not that he is, as a poet, any great favourite of 
mine. I admire his talents and genius highly; but his is 
not a poetical genius. The only qualities I can find in 
Dryden that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour 
and impetuosity of mind, with an excellent ear. It may 
seem strange that I do not add to this, great command of 
language : that he certainly has, and of such language, too, 
as it is most desirable that a poet should possess, or rather 
that he should not be without. But it is not language that 
is, in the highest sense of the word, poetical, being neither 
of the imagination nor of the passions ; I mean the amiable, 
the ennobling, or the intense passions. I do not mean to 
say that there is nothing of this in Dryden, but as little, I 
think, as is possible, considering how much he has written. 
You will easily understand my meaning, when I refer to 
his versification of Palamon and Arcite, as contrasted with 
the language of Chaucer. Dryden had neither a tender 
heart nor a lofty sense of moral dignity. Whenever his 
language is poetically impassioned, it is mostly upon un- 
pleasing subjects, such as the follies, vices, and crimes of 
classes of men or of individuals. That his cannot be the 
language of imagination, must have necessarily followed 
from this — that there is not a single image from nature 
in the whole body of his work ; and in his translation from 
Virgil, whenever Virgil can be fairly said to have had his 
eye upon his object, Dryden always spoils the passage. 



174 LITERARY VERDICTS 

Wordsworth as Compared with Milton 

John Keats to John Hamilton Reynolds 

Teignmouth, 3 May [1818]. 
I will return to Wordsworth — whether or no he has an 
extended vision or a circumscribed grandeur — whether he 
is an eagle in his nest or on the wing. And to be more 
explicit and to show you how tall I stand by the giant;, I 
will put down a simile of human life as far as I now per- 
ceive it; that is, to the point to which I say we both have 
arrived at. Well — I compare human life to a large Man- 
sion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, 
the doors of the rest being as yet shut upojL me. The first 
we step into we call the Infant, or Thoughtless Chamber, 
in which we remain as long as we do not think. We re- 
main there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors 
of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a 
bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are 
at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the 
thinking principle within us — we no sooner get into the 
second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden- 
Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and 
the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and 
think of delaying there for ever in delight. However 
among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremen- 
dous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and 
nature of Man — of convincing one's nerves that the world 
is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and Op- 
pression — whereby this Chamber of Maiden-Thought be- 
comes gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all 
sides of it, many doors are set open — but all dark — all 
leading to dark passages. We see not the balance of good 
and evil ; we are in a mist, we are now in that state, we 



JOHN KEATS 175 

feel the ''Burden of the Mystery." To this point was 
Wordsworth come^ as far as I can conceive, when he wrote 
" Tintern Abbey/' and it seems to me that his genius is 
explorative of those dark Passages. Now if we live, and 
go on thinking, we too shall explore them. He is a genius 
and superior to us, in so far as he can, more than we, 
make discoveries and shed a light in them. Here I must 
think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though I think 
it has depended more upon the general and gregarious ad- 
vance of intellect, than individual greatness of Mind. 
From the Paradise Lost and the other Works of Milton, 
I hope it is not too presuming, even between ourselves, to 
sa}^, that his Philosophy, human and divine, may be toler- 
ably understood by one not much advanced in years. In 
his time Englishmen were just emancipated from a great 
superstition, and Men had got hold of certain points and 
resting-places in reasoning which were too newly born 
to be doubted, and too much opposed by the Mass of 
Europe not to be thought ethereal and authentically divine 
— Who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity 
in Comus just at the time of the dismissal of Cod-pieces 
and a hundred other disgraces? who would not rest satis- 
fied with his hintings at good and evil in the Paradise 
Lost, when just free from the Inquisition and burning in 
Smithfield? The Reformation produced such immediate 
and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under 
the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining dogmas 
and superstitions then, as it were, regenerated, constituted 
those resting-places and other sure points of Eeasoning — 
from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may 
have thought in the sequel, appears to have been content 
with these by his writings. He did not think into the 
human heart as Wordsworth has done. Yet Milton as a 
Philosopher had sure as great powers as Wordsworth. 



176 LITERARY VERDICTS 

What is then to be inferred? many things. It proves 
there is really a grand march of intellect, it proves that 
a mighty Providence subdues the mightiest minds to the 
service of the time being, whether it be in human Knowl- 
edge or Eeligion. I have often pitied a tutor who has to 
hear " Nom. Musa " so often dinn'd into his ears — I hope 
you may not have the same pain in this scribbling — I may 
have read these things before, but I never had even a 
thus dim perception of them; and moreover I like to say 
my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness, for my 
own sake. After all there is certainly something real in 
the world — Moore's present to Hazlitt is real — I like that 
Moore, and am glad I saw him at the Theatre just before 
I left town. Tom has spit a leetle blood this afternoon, 
and that is rather a damper — ^but I know — the truth is, 
there is something real in the World. Your third Cham- 
ber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one — stored with 
the wine of Love — and the bread of Friendship. When you 
see George, if he should not have received a letter from 
me tell him he will find one at home most likely — tell 
Bailey I hope soon to see him. Eemember me to all. The 
leaves have been out here for many a day. I have written 
to George for the first stanzas of my " Isabel,^' — I shall 
have them soon, and will copy the whole out for you. 

Your affectionate friend 

John Keats. 

A Verdict Upon the Literature of His Own Age 

Thomas De Quincey to a Young Man ^Yllo Had Con- 
sulted Him Upon the Advisability of Adopting 
Literature as a Career 

Want of experience, therefore, or insufficient experience, 
may render my judgment in such a case partially wrong. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 177 

But at least I can promise you an honest judgment; and 
next week, when I shall be less oppressed by calls upon 
my time, this shall be at your service. By an honest judg- 
ment I do not mean to insinuate that authors in general 
are capable of feeling any bias from jealousy lest they 
should be the means of introducing a fresh competitor 
into the paths of literature. Far from it. The literary 
body, as a whole, is honourable, and generous. And very 
few, indeed, I am sure, would give a false report under 
this bias. But most men addict themselves to speaking 
cynically of contemporary literature, as every age and 
generation in succession speaks cynically of itself. They 
persuade themselves that all things are amiss; that the 
spirit of originality is extinct; and, as every age in turn 
sees most of the imitative spirit which gathers round the 
heel of power, these men fancy that peculiar to their own 
times which has merely been brushed away from the face 
of past times by its own intrinsic perishableness. Now, at 
least I can hold myself to be free from these too common 
prepossessions. I see more to admire, more power and 
vital force of every kind, in my own generation than in 
any other. And I refuse to be duped by the scenical 
effects of distance or abstraction. It does not follow that 
our literature is in a good state. I think it far otherwise ; 
but its faults are not from want of power. 

With respect to the other question, not only is it much 
more difficult because a personal question, allowing for 
the utmost candour in both parties to such an inquiry, but 
it is really a dangerous one for any peremptory judgment, 
and for a reason which, perhaps, you will stare at. The 
notion is universal that talent, a fortiori genius, never 
grows. All which a man has he had from the beginning. 
Growth takes place in knowledge, in skill, in address, and 
many artificial qualities; but not, it is supposed, in down- 



178 LITERARY VERDICTS 

right power. Now, I beg you to suppose that it is no love 
of paradox which forces me into any opposite opinion. I 
will not contend as to the absolute metaphysical realities 
of the case. Whether genius,' like coal and diamonds in 
some theories, is always in a secret state of growth, or 
whether it is only that a veil clears away from the mind, 
leaving what was always there more conspicuously visible, 
either way the result is the same ; experience of life, larger 
comprehension of truth, above all, solitude, grief, medita- 
tion, do effectually bring out powers in the adult not con- 
jecturally visible in the boy or very young man. 

Congratulating Dickens on " The Christmas 
Carol " 

Francis Jeffrey to Charles DicTcens 

Edinburgh, December 26, 1843. 
Blessings on your kind heart, my dear Dickens! and 
may it always be as light and full as it is kind, and a foun- 
tain of kindness to all within reach of its beatings! We 
are all charmed with your Carol, chiefly, I think, for the 
genuine goodness which breathes all through it, and in the 
true inspiring angel by which its genius has been awakened. 
The whole scene of the Cratchetts is like the dream of a 
beneficent angel in spite of its broad reality, and little 
tiny Tim, in life and death almost as sweet and as touch- 
ing as Nelly. And then the school-day scene, with that 
large-hearted delicate sister, and her true inheritor, with 
his gall-lacking liver, and milk of human kindness for 
blood, and yet all so natural, and so humbly and serenely 
happy ! Well, you should be happy yourself, for you may 
be sure you have done more good, and not only fastened 
more kindly feelings, but prompted more positive acts of 



FRANCIS JEFFREY 179 

beneficence, by this little publication, than can be traced 
to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom since 
Christmas, 1842. 

And is not this better than caricaturing American 
knaveries, or lavishing 3^our great gifts of fancy and obser- 
vation on Pecksniffs, Dodgers, Bailleys, and Moulds. Nor 
is this a mere crotchet of mine, for nine-tenths of your 
readers, I am convinced, are of the same opinion; and ac- 
cordingly, I prophesy that you will sell three times as 
many of this moral and pathetic Carol as of your grotesque 
and fantastical Chuzzlewits. 

I hope you have not fancied that I think less frequently 
of you, or love you less, because I have not lately written 
to you. Indeed it is not so; but I have been poorly in 
health for the last five months, and advancing age makes 
me lazy and perhaps forgetful. But I do not forget my 
benefactors, and I owe too much to you not to have you 
constantly in my thoughts. I scarcely know a single 
individual to whom I am indebted for so much pleas- 
ure, and the means at least of being made better. 
I wish you had not made such an onslaught on the 
Americans. Even if it were all merited, it does mischief, 
and no good. Besides, you know that there are many ex- 
ceptions; and if ten righteous might have saved a city 
once, there are surely innocent and amiable men and 
women, and besides, boys and girls enough, in that vast 
region, to arrest the proscription of a nation. I cannot 
but hope, therefore, that you will relent before you have 
done with them, and contrast your deep shadings with 
some redeeming touches. God bless you. I must not say 
more to-day. With most kind love to Mrs. Dickens, always 
very affectionately, etc. 

Since writing this in the morning, and just as I was 
going to seal it, in comes another copy of the Carol, with 



180 LITERARY VERDICTS 

a flattering autograph on the blank page, and an address 
in your own "fine Roman hand." I thank yon with all 
my heart, for this proof of your remembrance, and am 
pleased to think, that while I was so occupied about you, 
you had not been forgetful of me. Heaven bless you and 
all that are dear to you. Ever yours, etc. 



A Lady's Opinion of Lord Byron 

Miss Mitford to Benjamin Robert Hay don 

2nd November, 1824. 
I have just finished Lord Byron's " Conversations " (you 
are going to be very angry now), and I find my words of 
enthusiasm for the noble poet very fully justified and 
borne out. To say nothing of the open and avowed profli- 
gacy abroad and at home, only think of the taste which 
the book shows — the crying down Keats, Milton, Shakes- 
peare, Wordsworth — the crying up Moore's frippery 
songs, Dr. Johnson's heavy criticisms, and his own dull 
plays. What he says of Shakespeare, and of Wordsworth 
in particular, is disgusting. To fasten on the few and 
rare grossnesses of Shakespeare, which pure-minded read- 
ers pass over almost without consciousness, and forget all 
that there is of divine in the poet of the world; and to 
pitch on a few faults of system in Wordsworth, and to 
speak of him as if he was no poet at all. Fifty years 
hence our descendants will see which is remembered best, 
the author of the " Excursion," or of " Childe Harold." 
But he seems to me to have wanted the power of admira- 
tion, the organ of veneration ; to have been a cold, sneering, 
vain, Voltairish person, charitable as far as money went, 
and liberal as far as it did not interfere with his aristo- 
cratic notions; but very derisive, very un-English, very 



BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON 181 

scornful. Captain Medwyn speaks of his suppressed 
laugh. How unpleasant an idea that gives ! The only thing 
that does him much credit in the whole book is his hearty 
admiration of Scott. But Scott did not interfere with him. 
If Sir Walter had been a poet as Wordsworth, we should 
have seen. 

Byeon Beyond Wordsworth and Keats Beyond 
Them All 

Benjamin Robert Hay don to Miss Mitford 

1824. 
You are unjust, depend upon it, in your estimate of 
Byron's poetry, and wrong in your ranking Wordsworth 
beyond him. There are things in Byron's poetry so ex- 
quisite, that, fifty or five hundred years hence, they will be 
read, felt, and adored throughout the world. I grant that 
Wordsworth is very pure and very holy, and very ortho- 
dox, and occasionally very elevated, highly poetical, and 
often insufferably obscure, starched, dowdy, anti-human 
and anti-s3rmpathetic, but he never will be ranked above 
Byron nor classed with Milton; he will not, indeed. He 
wants the constructive power, the lucidus ordo of the 
greatest minds, which is as much a proof of the highest 
order as any other quality. I dislike his selfish Quak- 
erism; his affectation of superior virtue; his utter insen- 
sibility to the frailties — the beautiful frailties of passion. 
I was once walking with him on Pall Mall ; we darted into 
Christie's. A copy of the ^''Transfiguration" was at the 
head of the room, and in the corner a beautiful copy of 
the " Cupid and Psyche " (statues) kissing. Cupid is tak- 
ing her lovely chin, and turning her pouting mouth to 
meet his, while he archly bends his own down, as if say- 
ing, " Pretty dear ! " You remember this exquisite group ? 



183 LITERARY VERDICTS 

Catching sight of the Cupid, as he and I were com- 
ing out, Wordsworth's face reddened, he showed his teeth^ 
and then said in a loud voice, " THE DEV-V-V-VILS ! " 
There's a mind! Ought not this exquisite group to have 
roused his " Shapes of Beauty," and have softened his heart 
as much as his old gray-mossed rocks, his withered thorn, 
and his dribbling mountain streams? I am altered about 
Wordsworth, very much, from finding him a bard too ele- 
vated to attend to the music of humanity. No, no! give 
me Byron, with all his spite, hatred, depravity, dandyism, 
vanity, frankness, passion, and idleness, to Wordsworth, 
with all his heartless communion with woods and grass. 

When he came back from his tour, I breakfasted with 
him in Oxford street. He read " Laodamia " to me, and 
very finely. He had altered, at the suggestion of his wife, 
Laodamia's fate (but I cannot refer to it at this moment), 
because she had shown such weakness as to wish her hus- 
band's stay. Mrs. Wordsworth held that Laodamia ought 
to be punished, and punished she was. I will refer to it. 
Here it is — 

" She, whom a trance of passion thus removed 
As she departed, not without the crime 
Of lovers, who, in reason's spite have loved. 
Was doomed to wander in a joyless clime, 
Apart from happy ghosts, that gather flowers 
Of blissful quiet in Elysian bowers." 

I have it in his own hand. This is different from the first 
edition. And as he repeated it with self-approbation of 
his own heroic feelings for punishing a wife because she 
felt a pang at her husband going to hell again, his own wife* 
sat crouched by tha fireplace, and chanted every line to 
the echo, apparently congratulating herself at being above 
the mortal frailty of loving her William. 

You should make allowance for Byron's not liking 



LORD MACAULAY 183 

Keats. He could not. Keats' poetry was an immortal 
stretch beyond the mortal intensity of his own. An intense 
egotism, as it were, was the leading exciter of Byron's 
genius. He could feel nothing for fauns, or satyrs, or 
gods, or characters past, unless the associations of them 
were excited by some positive natural scene where they had 
actually died, written or fought. All his poetry was the 
result of a deep feeling roused by what passed before his 
eyes. Keats was a stretch beyond this. 

He Returns to His Classics and Finds in Them 
Solace for Grief 

Lord Macaulay to Thomas Flower Ellis 

Calcutta, February 8, 1835. 
Dear Ellis, — The last month has been the most painful 
that I ever went through. Indeed, I never knew before 
what it was to be miserable. Early in January, letters from 
England brought me news of the death of my youngest sis- 
ter. ^ATiat she was to me no words can express. I will not 
say that she was dearer to me than anything in the world ; 
for my sister who was with me was equally dear ; but she 
was as dear to me as one human being can be to another. 
Even now, when Time has begun to do its healing office, I 
cannot write about her without being altogether unmanned. 
That I have not utterly sunk under this blow I owe chiefly 
to literature. What a blessing it is to love books as I love 
them; and to be able to converse with the dead — to live 
amidst the unreal ! Many times during the last few weeks 
I have repeated to myself those fine lines of old Hesiod : 

£\ yap Tig koI tzevOoq e;i;wv vEOKTfdei Bvjii3 
a^TiTai Kpadijjv clkuxw^voq, avrap aoiSbg 
/lovffdov BepdiTuv Klela Trporepuv avBpunuv 
vfiv^ay, fiaKapdg re Oeovg ol 'GAv/zttov l;\;ov(7i, 



184 LITERARY VERDICTS 

cuif/ bye Svo<}>pov£uv eTTikr^erai^ ovdi tl KTjdeuv 
fiefivriTar rax^c^C ^^ "TrapeTpaTre dupa Beduv."* 

I have gone back to Greek literature with a passion 
quite astonishing to myself.'' I have never felt anything 
like it. I was enraptured with Italian during the six 
months which I gave up to it ; and I was little less pleased 
with Spanish. But, when I went back to the Greek, I felt 
as if I had never known before what intellectual enjoyment 
was. Oh that wonderful people ! There is not one art, nor 
one science, about which we may not use the same expres- 
sion which Lucretius has employed about the victory over 
superstition, " Primum Grains homo — ." 

I think myself very fortunate in having been able to re- 
turn to these great masters while still in the full vigor of 
life, and when my taste and judgment are mature. Most 
people read all the Greek that they ever read before they 

^ " For if to one whose grief is fresh, as he sits silent with 
sorrow-stricken heart, a minstrel, the henchman of the Muses, 
celebrates the men of old and the gods who possess Olympus; 
straightway he forgets his melancholy, and remembers not at all 
his grief, beguiled by the blessed gift of the goddesses of song." 
In Macaulay's Hesiod this passage is scored with three lines in 
pencil. 

^ In a previous letter, dated December 15, 1834, directed from 
Calcutta to the same correspondent he had said: "I read much, 
and particularly Greek; and I find that I am, in all essentials, 
still not a bad scholar. I could, I think, with a year's hard 
study, qualify myself to fight a good battle for a Craven's schol- 
arship. I read, however, not as I read at College, but like a man 
of the world. If I do not know a word, I pass it by, unless it is 
important to the sense. If I find, as I have of late often found, 
a passage which refuses to give up its meaning at the second 
reading, I let it alone. I have read during the last fortnight, 
before breakfast, three books of Herodotus, and four plays of 
^schylus. My admiration of ^schylus has been prodigiously 
increased by this re-perusal. I cannot conceive how any person 
of the smallest pretension to taste should doubt about his im- 
measurable superiority to every poet of antiquity, Homer only 
excepted. Even Milton, I think, must yield to him." 



LORD MACAULAY 185 

are five and twenty. They never find time for such studies 
afterwards till they are in the decline of life; and then 
their knowledge of the language is in a great measure lost, 
and cannot easily be recovered. Accordingly, almost all the 
ideas that people have of Greek literature, are ideas 
formed while they were still very young. A young man, 
whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer 
as Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years 
ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accus- 
tomed to historical researches, and to political affairs ; and 
I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his 
greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now 
read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly. But 
what a poet! The Medea, the Alcestis, the Troades, the 
Bacchae, are alone sufficient to place him in the very first 
rank. Instead of depreciating him, as I have done, I 
may, for aught I know, end by editing him. 

I have read Pindar — with less pleasure than I feel in 
reading the great Attic poets, but still with admiration. 
An idea occurred to me which may very likely have been 
noticed by a hundred people before. I was always puzzled 
to understand the reason for the extremely abrupt transi- 
tions in those Odes of Horace which are meant to be par- 
ticularly fine. The " justum et tenacem " is an instance. 
All at once you find yourself in heaven. Heaven knows 
how. Wliat the firmness of just men in times of tyranny, 
or of tumult, has to do with Juno's oration about Troy it 
is hardly possible to conceive. Then, again, how strangely 
the fight between the Gods and the Giants is tacked on 
to the fine hymn to the Muses in that noble ode, " De- 
Bcende coelo et die age tibia'' ! This always struck me 
as a great fault, and an inexplicable one; for it is pecu- 
liarly alien from the calm good sense, and good taste, 
which distinguish Horace. 



186 LITERARY VERDICTS 

My explanation of it is this. The Odes of Pindar were 
the acknowledged models of lyric poetry. Lyric poets imi- 
tated his manner as closely as they could ; and nothing was 
more remarkable in his compositions than the extreme vio- 
lence and abruptness of the transitions. This in Pindar 
was quite natural and defensible. He had to write an im- 
mense number of poems on subjects extremely barren, and 
extremely monotonous. There could be little difference 
between one boxing-match and another. Accordingly, he 
made all possible haste to escape from the immediate sub- 
ject, and to bring in, by hook or by crook, some local 
description ; some old legend ; something or other, in short, 
which might be more susceptible of poetical embellishment, 
and less utterly threadbare, than the circumstances of a 
race or a wrestling-match. This was not the practice of 
Pindar alone. There is an old story which proves that 
Simonides did the same, and that sometimes the hero of 
the day was nettled at finding how little was said about him 
in the Ode for which he was to pay. This abruptness of 
transition was, therefore, in the Greek lyric poets, a fault 
rendered inevitable by the peculiarly barren and uniform 
nature of the subjects which they had to treat. But, like 
many other faults of great masters, it appeared to their 
imitators a beauty; and a beauty almost essential to the 
grander Ode. Horace was perfectly at liberty to choose 
his own subjects, and to treat them after his own fashion. 
But he confounded what was merely accidental in Pindar's 
manner with what was essential ; and because Pindar, when 
he had to celebrate a foolish lad from ^gina who had 
tripped up another's heels at the Isthmus, made all possible 
haste to get away from so paltry a topic to the ancient 
heroes of the race of ^acus, Horace took it into his head 
that he ought always to begin as far from the subject as 
possible, and then arrive at it by some strange and sudden 



LORD MACAULAY 187 

bound. 'This is my solution. At least I can find no better. 
The most obscure passage, — at least the strangest passage, 
— in all Horace may be explained by supposing that he was 
misled by Pindar's example : I mean that odd parenthesis 
in the " Qualem Ministrum " : 

quibus 
Mos unde deductus per omne — . 

This passage, taken by itself, always struck me as the 
harshest, queerest, and most preposterous digression in the 
world. But there are several things in Pindar very like it. 
You must excuse all this, for I labour at present under a 
suppression of Greek, and am likely to do so for at least 
three years to come. Malkin may be some relief ; but I am 
quite unable to guess whether he means to come to Calcutta. 
I am in excellent bodily health, and I am recovering my 
mental health; but I have been sorely tried. Money mat- 
ters look well. My new brother-in-law and I are brothers 
in more than law. I am more comfortable than I expected 
to be in this country; and, as to the climate, I think it, 
beyond all comparison, better than that of the House of 
Commons. 

Yours affectionately 

T. B. Macaulay. 

Wherein Plato is Re-discovered and a German 
Professor Condemned 

Lord Macaulay to Thomas Flower Ellis 

Calcutta, May 29, 1835. 
My time is divided between public business and books. I 
mix with society as little as I can. My spirits have not yet 
recovered, — I sometimes think that they will never wholly 
recover, — the shock which they received five months ago. 
I find that nothing soothes them so much as the contem- 



188 LITERARY VERDICTS 

plation of those miracles of art which Athens has be- 
queathed to us. I am really becoming, I hope not a pedant, 
but certainly an enthusiast about classical literature. I 
have just finished a second reading of Sophocles. I am 
now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his 
works. His genius is above praise. Even where he is most 
absurd, — ^as, for example, in the Cratylus, — he shows an 
acuteness, and an expanse of intellect, which is quite a 
phenomenon by itself. The character of Socrates does not 
rise upon me. The more I read about him, the less I won- 
der that they poisoned him. If he had treated me as he is 
said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and Gorgias, I 
could never have forgiven him. 

Nothing has struck me so much in Plato's dialogues as 
the raillery. At college, somehow or other, I did not un- 
derstand or appreciate it. I cannot describe to you the 
way in which it now tickles me. I often sink forward on 
my huge old Marsilius Ficinus in a fit of laughter. I 
should say that there never was a vein of ridicule so rich, 
at the same time so delicate. It is superior to Voltaire's; 
nay, to Pascal's. Perhaps there are one or two passages 
in Cervantes, and one or two in Fielding, that might 
give a modern reader a notion of it. 

I have very nearly finished Livy. I never read him 
through before. I admire him greatly, and would give 
a quarter's salary to recover the lost Decades. While I 
was reading the earlier books I went again through Nie- 
buhr. And I am sorry to say that, having always been a 
little sceptical about his merits, I am now a confirmed un- 
believer. I do not of course mean that he has no merit. 
He was a man of immense learning, and of great ingenuity. 
But his mind was utterly wanting in the faculty by which 
a demonstrated truth is distinguished from a plausible 
supposition. He is not content with suggesting that an 



LORD MACAULAY 189 

event may have happened. He is certain that it happened, 
and calls on the reader to be certain too (though not a 
trace of it exists in any record whatever), because it would 
solve the phenomena so neatly. Just read over again, if 
you have forgotten it, the conjectural restoration of the 
Inscription in page 126 of the second volume ; and then, on 
your honour as a scholar and a man of sense, tell me 
whether in Bentley's edition of Milton there is anything 
which approaches to the audacity of the emendation. 
Niebuhr requires you to believe that some of the greatest 
men in Rome were burned alive in the Circus; that this 
event was commemorated by an inscription on a monument, 
one-half of which is still in existence; but that no Roman 
historian knew anything about it; and that all tradition 
of the event was lost, though the memory of anterior events 
much less important has reached our time. When you ask 
for a reason, he tells you plainly that such a thing cannot 
be established by reason ; that he is sure of it ; and that you 
must take his word. This sort of intellectual despotism 
always moves me to mutiny, and generates a disposition 
to pull down the reputation of the dogmatist. Niebuhr^s 
learning was immeasurably superior to mine; but I think 
myself quite as good a judge of evidence as he was. I 
might easily believe him if he told me that there were 
proofs which I had never seen; but, when he produces all 
his proofs, I conceive that I am perfectly competent to 
pronounce on their value. 

As I turned over his leaves just now, I lighted on an- 
other instance of what I cannot but call ridiculous pre- 
sumption. He says that Martial committed a blunder in 
making the penultimate of Porsena short. Strange that 
so great a scholar should not know that Horace had done 
so too ! 

Miuacia aut Etrusca Porsence manus. 



190 LITERARY VERDICTS 

There is something extremely nauseous to me in a G-erman 
Professor telling the world;, on his own authority, and with- 
out giving the smallest reason, that two of the best Latin 
poets were ignorant of the quantity of a word which they must 
have used in their exercises at school a hundred times. 

As to the general capacity of Niebuhr for political 
speculations, let him be judged by the Preface to the Sec- 
ond Volume. He there says, referring to the French Revo- 
lution of July 1830, that " unless God send us some 
miraculous help, we have to look forward to a period of 
destruction similar to that which the Roman world 
experienced about the middle of the third century." Now, 
when I see a man scribble such abject nonsense about 
events which are passing under our eyes, what confidence 
can I put in his judgment as to the connection of causes 
and effects in times very imperfectly known to us ? 

But I must bring my letter, or review, to a close. Re- 
member me most kindly to your wife. Tell Frank that I 
mean to be a better scholar than he when I come back, and 
that he must work hard if he means to overtake me. 
Ever, dear Ellis, 

Your affectionate friend 

T. B. Macaulay. 

'' The Grand Heroic Spirit — that Trumpet-Stop 
ON His Organ " 

Charles Lever to John Blackivood 

Trieste, August 17, 1871. 
The fine part of Scott's nature to my thinking was the 
grand heroic spirit — that trumpet-stop on his organ — 
which elevated our commonplace people and stirred the 
heart of all that was high-spirited and generous amongst 
us. It was the anti-climax to our realism and sensational- 
ism — detective Police Literature or Watch-house Romance. 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 191 

. . . The very influence that a gentleman exerts in society 
on a knot of inferiors was the sort of influence Scott 
brought to bear upon the whole nation. All felt that there 
was at least one there before whom nothing mean or low or 
shabby should be exhibited. 

Those Inimitable Dickens Touches 

William Makepeace ThacJceray to Mrs. Broolcfield 

1849. 
Have you read Dickens ? ! it is charming ! brave 
Dickens ! It has some of his very prettiest touches — those 
inimitable Dickens touches which make such a great man 
of him; and the reading of the book has done another 
author a great deal of good. In the first place it pleases 
the other author to see that Dickens, who has long left off 
alluding to the A's works, has been copying the 0. A. and 
greatly simplifying his style, and overcoming the use of 
fine words. By this the public will be the gainer and 
David Copperfield will be improved by taking a lesson from 
Yanity Fair. Secondly it has put me upon my metal; 
for ah ! Madame, all the metal was out of me and I have 
been dreadfully and curiously cast down this month past. 
I say, secondly, it has put me on my metal and made me 
feel I must do something; that I have fame and name 
and family to support. . . . 

He Revolts Against Asceticism 
William Makepeace Thackeray to Mr. and Mrs. Brookfield 

Christmas, 1849. 
I stop in the middle of Costigan with a remark applied 
to readers of Thomas a Kempis and others, which is, I 
think, that cushion-thumpers and High and Low Church 
extatics, have often carried what they call their love for 
A to what seems impertinence to me. How good my 



192 LITERARY VERDICTS 

has been to me in sending me a backaclie, — ^how good in 
taking it away, how blessed the spiritual gift which enabled 
me to receive the sermon this morning, — how trying my 
dryness at this afternoon's discourse, etc. I say it is awful 
and blasphemous to be calling upon Heaven to interfere 

about the thousand trivialities of a man's life, that has 

ordered me something indigestible for dinner (which may 
account for my dryness in the afternoon's discourse) ; to 
say that it is Providence that sends a draught of air upon 
me which gives me a cold in the head, or superintends per- 
sonally the action of the James' powder that makes me 
well. Bow down. Confess, Adore, Admire, and Rever- 
ence infinitely. Make your act of faith and trust. 
Acknowledge with constant awe the idea of the infinite 
Presence over all. — But what impudence it is in us, to talk 
about loving God enough, if I may so speak. Wretched 
little blindlings, what do we know about Him ? Who says 
that we are to sacrifice the human affections as disrespect- 
ful to God? The liars, the wretched canting fakirs of 
Christianism, the convent and conventicle dervishes, — they 
are only less unreasonable now than the Eremites and holy 
women who whipped and starved themselves, never washed, 
and encouraged vermin for the glory of God. Washing is 
allowed now, and bodily filth and pain not always enjoined; 
but still they say, shut your ears and don't hear music, close 
your eyes and don't see nature and beauty, steel your hearts 
and be ashamed of your love for your neighbour ; and timid 
fond souls scared by their curses, and bending before their 
unending arrogance and dulness, consent to be miserable, 
and bare their soft shoulders for the brutes' stripes, accord- 
ing to the nature of women. You dear Suttees, you get 
ready and glorify in being martyrized. Nature, truth, love, 
protest day after day in your tender hearts against the 
stupid remorseless tyranny which bullies you. Why you 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 193 

dear creature, what a history that is in the Thomas a 
Kempis book ! The scheme of that book carried out would 
make the world the most wretched;, useless, dreary, doting 
place of sojourn — there would be no manhood, no love, no 
tender ties of mother and child, no use of intellect, no 
trade or science, a set of selfish beings crawling about 
avoiding one another and howling a perpetual miserere. 
We know that deductions like this have been drawn from 
the teaching of J. C, but please God the world is preparing 
to throw them over, and I won't believe them though they 
are written in ever so many books, any more than that the 
sky is green or the grass red. Those brutes made the 
grass red many a time, fancying they were acting rightly, 
amongst others with the blood of the person who was born 
today. Goodbye my dear lady and my dear old William. 

A Woman and Her Hero ^ 

Charlotte Bronte to W. 8. Williams ^ 

I 

Dec. nth, 1847. 
I was glad and proud to get the bank bill Mr. Smith 

^Thackeray (1811-1863) in 1848 sent Miss Bronte a copy 
of Vanity Fair. In 1852 he sent her a copy of Esmond, together 
with his grateful regards. The second edition of Jane Eyre was 
dedicated by Charlotte Bronte to him as to "an intellect pro- 
founder and more unique than his contemporaries have yet rec- 
ognised." When his portrait was presented to her by Mr. George 
Smith, she stood before it, shaking her fist at it half-playfully, 
and saying, " Thou Titan ! " After her death Thackeray recorded 
the impression wrought upon him by his first meeting with her 
in these words: "I fancied an austere little Joan of Arc march- 
ing in upon us and rebuking our easy lives, our easy morals." 
Again he says : " She gave me the impression of being a very 
pure, and lofty, and high-minded person. A great and holy 
reverence of right and truth seemed to be with her always." 

^Mr. Williams (1800-1875) was the recipient of far and away 



194 LITERARY VERDICTS 

sent me yesterday, but I hardly ever felt delight equal to 
that which cheered me when I received your letter con- 
taining an extract from a note by Mr. Thackeray, in which 
he expressed himself gratified with the perusal of Jane 
Eyre. Mr. Thackeray is a keen ruthless satirist. I had 
never perused his writings but with blended feelings of 
admiration and indignation. Critics, it appears to me, do 
not know what an intellectual boa-constrictor he is. They 
call him " humorous," " brilliant " — his is a most scalping 
humour, a most deadly brilliancy: he does not play with 
his prey, he coils round it and crushes it in his rings. He 
seems terribly in earnest in his war against the falsehood 
and follies of ''the world." I often wonder what that 
" world " thinks of him. I should think the faults of such 
a man would be distrust of anything good in human nature 
— galling suspicion of bad motives lurking behind good 
actions. Are these his failings ? 

They are, at any rate, the failings of his written senti- 
ments, for he cannot find in his heart to represent either 
man or woman as at once good and wise. Does he not too 
much confound benevolence with weakness and wisdom 
with mere craft? 

II 

March 29th, 1848. 

You mention Thackeray and the last number of Vanity 
Fair. The more I read Thackeray's works the more cer- 
tain I am that he stands alone — alone in his sagacity, alone 

the best letters that Charlotte Bronte ever wrote. He was 
" reader" to the publishing house of Smith & Elder; a post which 
has since been held by George Meredith, John Morley, and James 
Payn. It will be remembered that this was the firm which pub- 
lished the Bronte novels. He was a man of distinguished friend- 
ships. He had met with Coleridge. When Keats left England 
for Italy, it was Williams who saw him off. He associated with 
Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, Buskin, and many 
other well-known writers. 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 195 

in his truth, alone in his feeling (his feeling, though he 
makes no noise about it, is about the most genuine that 
ever lived on a printed page), alone in his power, alone in 
his simplicity, alone in his self-control. Thackeray is a 
Titan, so strong that he can afford to perform with calm 
the most herculean feats; there is the charm and majesty 
of repose in his greatest efforts; he borrows nothing from 
fever, his is never the energy of delirium — his energy is 
sane energy, deliberate energy, thoughtful energy. The 
last number of Vanity Fair proves this peculiarly. Forci- 
ble, exciting in its force, still more impressive than ex- 
citing, carrying on the interest of the narrative in a flow, 
deep, full, resistless, it is still quiet—as quiet as reflection, 
as quiet as memory; and to me there are parts of it that 
sound as solemn as an oracle. Thackeray is never borne 
away by his own ardour— he has it under control. His 
genius obeys him — it is his servant, it works no fantastic 
changes at its own wild will, it must still achieve the task 
which reason and sense assign it, and none other. Thack- 
eray is unique. I can say no more, I will say no less. 



Ill 

Aug. lUJi, 1848. 
I have already told you, I believe, that I regard Mr. 
Thackeray as the first of modern masters, and as the legiti- 
mate high priest of Truth ; I study him accordingly with 
reverence. He, I see, keeps the mermaid's tail below 
water, and only hints at the dead men's bones and noxious 
slime amidst which it wriggles; lut, his hint is more vivid 
than other men's elaborate explanations, and never is his 
satire whetted to so keen an edge as when with quiet mock- 
ing irony he modestly recommends to the approbation of 
the public his own exemplary discretion and forbearance. 



196 LITERARY VERDICTS 

The world begins to know Thackeray rather better than it 
did two years or even a year ago^, but as yet it only half 
knows him. His mind seems to me a fabric as simple and 
unpretending as it is deep-founded and enduring — there 
is no meretricious ornament to attract or fix a superficial 
glance ; his great distinction of the genuine is one that can 
only be fully appreciated with time. There is something, 
a sort of " still profound/' revealed in the concluding part 
of Vanity Fair which the discernment of one generation 
will not suffice to fathom. A hundred years hence, if he 
only lives to do justice to himself, he will be better known 
than he is now. A hundred years hence, some thoughtful 
critic, standing and looking down on the deep waters, will 
see shining through them the pearl without price of a 
purely original mind — such a mind as the Bulwers, etc., 
his contemporaries have not, — not acquirements gained 
from study, but the thing that came into the world with 
him — his inherent genius: the thing that made him, I 
doubt not, different as a child from other children, that 
caused him, perhaps, peculiar griefs and struggles in life, 
and that now makes him as a writer unlike other writers. 
Excuse me for recurring to this theme, I do not wish to 
bore you. 

IV 

January lOtJi, 1850. 
Thackeray's Christmas Book at once grieved and pleased 
me, as most of his writings do. I have come to the con- 
clusion that whenever he writes, Mephistopheles stands on 
his right hand and Eaphael on his left; the great doubter 
and sneerer usually guides the pen, the Angel, noble and 
gentle, interlines letters of light here and there. Alas! 
Thackeray, I wish your strong wings would lift you oftener 
above the smoke of cities into the pure region nearer 
heaven ! 



CHARLOTTE BRONTE 197 

The Chinese Fidelity and Miniature Delicacy of 
Jane Austen 

Charlotte Bronte to W. 8. Williams 

April mil, 1850. 
I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works — Emma 
— read it with interest and with just the degree of admira- 
tion which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensi- 
ble and suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm — 
anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt is utterly out of 
place in commending these works: all such demonstration 
the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would 
have calmly scorned as outre and extravagant. She does 
her business of delineating the surface of the lives of 
genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese 
fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting. She ruffles 
her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing 
profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her; 
she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy 
sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more 
than an occasional graceful but distant recognition — too 
frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth ele- 
gance of her progress. Her business is not half so much 
with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, 
hands, and feet. What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves 
flexibly, it suits her to study; but what throbs fast and 
full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what 
is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death — 
this Miss Austen ignores. She no more, with her mind's 
eye, beholds the heart of her race than each man, with 
bodily vision, sees the heart in his heaving breast. Jane 
Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very 
incomplete and rather insensible {not senseless) woman. 



198 LITERARY VERDICTS 

If tliis is heresy, I cannot help it. If I said it to some 
people (Lewes for instance) they would directly accuse 
me of advocating exaggerated heroics, but I am not afraid 
of your falling into any such vulgar error. — Believe me, 
yours sincerely, C. Bronte. 

Arranging the Poets in the Order of Their 
Morality 

Edward FitzGerald to John Allen 

Wherstead, July 4, 1835. 
What you say of Tennyson and Wordsworth is not, I 
think, wholly just. I don't think that a man can turn 
himself so directly to the service of morality, unless nat- 
urally inclined: I think Wordsworth's is a natural bias 
that way. Besides, one must have labourers of different 
kinds in the vineyard of morality, which I certainly look 
up to as the chief object of our cultivation: Wordsworth 
is first in the craft : but Tennyson does no little by raising 
and. filling the brain with noble images and thoughts, 
which, if they do not direct us to our duty, purify and 
cleanse us from mean and vicious objects, and so prepare 
and fit us for the reception of the higher philosophy. A 
man might forsake a drunken party to read Byron's Cor- 
sair: and Byron's Corsair for Shelley's Alastor: and the 
Alastor for the Dream of Fair Women or the Palace of 
Art : and then I won't say he would forsake these two last 
for anything of Wordsworth's, but his mind would be 
sufficiently refined and spiritualised to admit Wordsworth, 
and profit by him: and he might keep all the former 
imaginations as so many pictures, or pieces of music, in 
his mind. But I think you will see Tennyson acquire all 
that at present you miss: when he has felt life, he will 
not die fruitless of instruction to man as he is. But I dis- 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 199 

like this kind of criticism, especially in a letter. I don't 
know any one who has thought out anything so little as I 
have. I don't see to any end, and should keep silent till I 
have got a little more, and that little better arranged. 

I am sorry that all this page is filled with this bothera- 
tion, when I have a thousand truer and better things that I 
want to talk to you about. I will write to you again soon. 

Sophocles is a Pure Greek Temple, but ^schylus 

Troubles Men with His Grandeur 

AND His Gloom 

Edward FitzGerald to E. B. Cowell 

(?1848.) 
I do not know that I praised Xenophon's imagination in 
recording such things as Alcibiades at Lampsacus;^ all I 
meant to say was that the history was not dull which does 
record such facts, if it be for the imagination of others to 
quicken them. . . . As to Sophocles, I will not give up 
my old Titan. Is there not an infusion of Xenophon in 
Sophocles, as compared to ^schylus, — a dilution? Soph- 
ocles is doubtless the better artist, the more complete; but 
are we to expect anything but glimpses and ruins of the 
divinest? Sophocles is a pure Greek temple; but 
^schylus is a rugged mountain, lashed by seas, and riven 
by thunderbolts: and which is the most wonderful, and 
appalling? Or if one will have ^schylus too a work of 
man, I say he is like a Gothic Cathedral, which the Ger- 
mans say did rise from the genius of man aspiring up to the 
immeasurable, and reaching after the infinite in com- 
plexity and gloom, according as Christianity elevated and 
widened men's minds. A dozen lines of iEschylus have a 
more Almighty power on me than all Sophocles' plays; 

* Hellenica, II., i., 25. 



200 LITERARY VERDICTS 

though I would perhaps rather save Sophocles, as the con- 
summation of Greek art, than ^schylus' twelve lines, if 
it came to a choice which must be lost. Besides these 
^^schyluses trouble us with their grandeur and gloom; but 
Sophocles is always soothing, complete, and satisfactory. 

He is not Pleased with the Idylls of the King 

Edward FitzGerald to E. B. Cowell 

Woodbridge: Tuesday 

28 Dec, 1869. 

Your Letter today was a real pleasure — nay, a comfort 
— to me. For I had' begun to think that, for whatever 
reason, you had dropt me; and I know not one of all my 
friends whom I could less afford to lose. 

You anticipate rightly all I think of the new Idylls. I 
had bought the Book at Lowestoft: and when I returned 
here for Christmas found that A. T.'s Publisher had sent 
me a copy. As I suppose this was done by A. T.'s order, I 
have written to acknowledge the Gift, and to tell him some- 
thing, if not all, of what I think of them. I do not tell 
him that I think his hand weakened; but I tell him (what 
is very true) that, though the main Myth of King Arthur's 
Dynasty in Britain has a certain Grandeur in my Eyes, 
the several legendary fragments of it never did much inter- 
est me; excepting the Morte, which I suppose most in- 
terested him also, as he took it up first of all. I am not 
sure if such a Eomance as Arthur's is not best told in the 
artless old English in which it was told to Arthur's art- 
less successors four hundred years ago; or dished up anew 
in something of a Ballad Style like his own Lady of 
Shalott, rather than elaborated into a modern Epic form. 
I never cared, however, for any chivalric Epic; neither 
Tasso, nor Spenser, nor even Ariosto, whose Epic has a 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 201 

sort of Ballad-humour in it; Don Quixote is the only one 
of all this sort I have ever cared for. 

I certainly wish that Alfred had devoted his diminished 
powers to translating Sophocles, or ^schylus, as I fancy a 
Poet should do — one work, at any rate — of his great Prede- 
cessors. But Pegasus won't be harnessed. 



That Scott Resembles Homer in the Simplicity of 

His Story; and that Miss Austen Never 

Goes Out of the Parlour 

Edward FitzGemld to W. F. Pollock 

Woodbridge, Dec. 24 [1871]. 

The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott's best; the 
Women, Minna, Brenda, Noma, are poor theatrical figures. 
But Magnus and Jack Bunce and Claud Halcro (though 
the latter rather wearisome) are substantial enough: how 
wholesomely they swear ! and no one ever thinks of blaming 
Scott for it. There is a passage where the Company at 
Burgh Westra are summoned by Magnus to go down to the 
Shore to see the Boats go off to the Deep Sea fishing, and 
"they followed his stately step to the Shore as the Herd 
of Deer follows the leading Stag, with all manner of 
respectful Observance." This, coming in at the close of 
the preceding unaffected Narrative is to me like Homer, 
whom Scott really resembles in the simplicity and ease of 
his Story. This is far more poetical in my Eyes than all 

the Effort of , etc. And which of them has 

written such a Lyric as " Farewell to Northmaven " ? I 
finished the Book with Sadness; thinking I might never 
read it again. . . . 

P.S. Can't you send me your Paper about the Novel- 
ists ? As to which is the best of all I can't say : that Rich- 



202 LITERARY VERDICTS 

ardson (with all his twaddle) is better than Fielding, I am 
quite certain. There is nothing at all comparable to Love- 
lace in all Fielding, whose Characters are common and 
vulgar types ; of Squires, Ostlers, Lady's Maids, etc., very 
easily drawn. I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot 
be third, any more than first or second : I think you were 
rather drawn away by a fashion when you put her there: 
and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag 
whom so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as 
far as she goes : but she never goes out of the Parlour ; if 
but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or even one of Field- 
ing's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and 
swear a round Oath or two ! I must think the " Woman 
in White," with her Count Fosco, far beyond all that. 
Cowell constantly reads Miss Austen at night after his 
Sanskirt Philology is done: it composes him, like Gruel: 
or like Paisiello's Music, which Napoleon liked above all 
other, because he said it didn't interrupt his Thoughts. 

Literary Prejudices, Together with an Anecdote 
ABOUT His " Daddy " 

Edward FitzGerald to C. E. Norton 

Woodbridge, Fe. 7, '76. 
Dante's face I have not seen these ten years: only his 
Back on my Book Shelf. What Mr. Lowell * says of him 
recalled to me what Tennyson said to me some thirty-five 
or forty years ago. We were stopping before a shop in 
Eegent Street where were two Figures of Dante and Goethe. 
I (I suppose) said, " What is there in old Dante's Face that 
is missing in Goethe's?" And Tennyson (whose Profile 
then had certainly a remarkable likeness to Dante's) said : 
" The Divine." Then Milton; I don't think I've read him 
* In Among My Books. First series. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 203 

these forty years; the whole Scheme of the Poem, and 
certain Parts of it, looming as grand as anything in my 
Memory; but I never could read ten lines together without 
stumbling at some Pedantry that tipped me at once out of 
Paradise, or even Hell, into the Schoolroom, worse than 
either. Tennyson again used to say that the two grandest 
of all Similes were those of the Ships hanging in the Air, 
and '' the Gunpowder one," which he used slowly and grimly 
to enact, in the Days that are no more. He certainly then 
thought Milton the sublimest of all the Gang; his Diction 
modelled on Virgil, as perhaps Dante's. 

Spenser I never could get on with, and (spite of Mr. 
Lowell's good word) shall still content myself with such 
delightful Quotations from him as one lights upon here 
and there: the last from Mr. Lowell. 

Then, old " Daddy Wordsworth," as he was sometimes 
called, I am afraid, from my Christening, he is now, I sup- 
pose, passing under the Eclipse consequent on the Glory 
which followed his obscure Rise. I remember fifty years 
ago at our Cambridge, when the Battle was fighting for 
him by the Few against the Many of us who only laughed 
at "Louisa in the Shade," etc. His Brother was then 
Master of Trinity College; like all Wordsworths (unless 
the drowned Sailor) pompous and priggish. He used to 
drawl out the Chapel responses so that we called him the 
"Meeserable Sinner" and his brother the " Meeserable 
Poet." Poor fun enough; but I never can forgive the 
Lakers all who first despised, and then patronised " Walter 
Scott," as they loftily called him: and He, dear, noble, 
Fellow, thought they were quite justified. Well, your 
Emerson has done him far more Justice than his own 
Countryman Carlyle, who won't allow him to be a Hero in 
any ways, but sets up such a cantankerous narrow-minded 
Bigot as John Knox in his stead. I did go to worship at 



204 LITERARY VERDICTS 

Abbotsford, as to Stratford on Avon : and say that it was 
good to have so done. If you, if Mr. Lowell, have not 
lately read it, pray read Lockhart's account of his Journey 
to Douglas Dale on (I think) July 18 or 19, 1831. It is 
a piece of Tragedy, even to the muttering Thunder, like 
the Lammermuir, which does not look very small beside 
Peter Bell and Co. 

My dear Sir, this is a desperate Letter; and that last 
Sentence will lead to another dirty little Story about my 
Daddy : to which you must listen or I should feel like the 
Fine Lady in one of Vanburgh's Plays, " Oh my God, that 
you won't listen to a Woman of Quality when her Heart 
is bursting with Malice ! " And perhaps you on the other 
Side of the Great Water may be amused with a little of 
your old Granny's Gossip. 

Well then: about 1826, or 7, Professor Airy (now our 
Astronomer Royal) and his Brother William called on the 
Daddy at Rydal. In the course of Conversation Daddy 
mentioned that sometimes when genteel Parties came to 
visit him, he contrived to slip out of the room, and down 
the garden walk to where " The Party's " travelling Car- 
riage stood. This Carriage he would look into to see what 
Books they carried with them : and he observed it was gen- 
erally "Walter Scott's." It was Airy's Brother (a very 
veracious man, and an Admirer of Wordsworth, but, to be 
sure, more of Sir Walter) who told me this. It is this 
conceit that diminishes Wordsworth's stature among us, in 
spite of the mountain Mists he lived among. Also, a little 
stinginess ; not like Sir Walter in that ! I remember Hart- 
ley Coleridge telling us at Ambleside how Professor Wil- 
son and some one else (H. C. himself perhaps) stole a Leg 
of Mutton from Wordsworth's Larder for the fun of the 
Thing. 

Here then is a long Letter of old world Gossip from 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 205 

the old Home. I hope it won't tire you out: it need not, 
you know. 

''Pauvre et Triste Humanite" 

I 

Edward FitzGerald to Mrs. Kernble 

April 1881. 
My dear Mrs. Kemble^ 

Somewhat before my usual time, you see; but Easter 
comes, and I shall be glad to hear if you keep it in London, 
or elsewhere. Elsewhere there has been no inducement to 
go till today : when the Wind though yet East has turned 
to the Southern side of it; one can w^alk without any 
wrapper ; and I dare to fancy we have turned the corner of 
Winter at last. People talk of changed Seasons: only 
yesterday I was reading in my dear old Sevigne, how she 
was with the Duke and Duchess of Chaulnes at their 
Chateau of Chaulnes in Picardy all but two hundred years 
ago : that is in 1689 : and the green has not as yet ventured 
to shew its " nez " nor a Nightingale to sing. You see 
that I have returned to her as for some Spring Music, at 
any rate. As for the Birds, I have nothing but a Robin 
who seemed rather pleased when I sit down on a Bench 
under an old Ivied Pollard, where I suppose he has a Nest, 
poor little Fellow. But we have terrible Superstitions 
about him here; no less than that he always kills his 
Parents if he can: my young Reader is quite determined 
on this head: and there lately has been a Paper in some 
Magazine to the same eifect. 

My dear old Spedding sent me back to old Wordsworth 
too, who sings (his best songs I think) about the Moun- 
tains and Lakes they were both associated with : and with 
a quiet feeling he sings that somehow comes home to me 
more now than ever it did before. 



206 LITERARY VERDICTS 

As to Carlyle, I thought on my first reading that he 
must have been egare at the time of writing: a condition 
which I well remember saying to Spedding long ago that 
one of his temperament might likely fall into. And now 
I see that Mrs. Oliphant hints at something of the sort. 
Hers I think an admirable Paper : better than has yet been 
written, or (I believe) is likely to be written by any one 
else. ... I must think Carlyle's judgments mostly, or 
mainly, true ; but that he must have " lost his head " if not 
when he recorded them, yet when he left them in any one's 
hands to decide on their publication. Especially when not 
about Public Men, but about their Families. It is slaying 
the Innocent with the Guilty. But of all this you have 
doubtless heard in London more than enough. " Pauvre 
et triste humanite ! " One's heart opens again to him at 
the last: sitting alone in the middle of her Room. '^I 
want to die." " I want — a Mother." '^ Ah mamma 
Letizia ! " Napoleon is said to have murmured as he lay. 
By way of pendant to this recurs to me the Story that when 
Ducis was wretched his Mother would lay his head on her 
Bosom — " Ah, mon homme ! mon pauvre homme ! " 

And now I have written more than enough for your- 
self and me : whose Eyes may be the worse for it to-mor- 
row. I still go about in Blue Glasses, and flinch from 
Lamp and Candle. Pray let me know about your own 
Eyes, and your own Self; and believe me always sincerely 

yours. LiTTLEGRANGE. 

II 

Edward FitzOerald to C. E. Norton 

Woodbridge, May 12, '83. 
My dear Norton, 

Your Emerson-Carlyle of course interested me very 
much, as I believe a large public also. I had most to learn 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 207 

of Emerson, and that all good: but Carlyle came out in 
somewhat of a new light to me also. Now we have him in 
his Jane's letters, as we had seen something of him before 
in the Eeminiscences : but a yet more tragic Story ; so tragic 
that I know not if it ought not to have been withheld from 
the Public: assuredly, it seems to me, ought to have been 
but half of the whole that now is. But I do not the less 
recognise Carlyle for more admirable than before — if for 
no other reason than his thus furnishing the world with 
weapons against himself which the World in general is 
glad to turn against him. . . . 

And, by way of finishing what I have to say on Carlyle 
for the present, I will tell you that I had to go up to our 
huge, hideous London a week ago, on disagreeable busi- 
ness ; which Business, however, I got over in time for me to 
run to Chelsea before I returned home at Evening. I 
wanted to see the Statue on the Chelsea Embankment 
which I had not yet seen: and the old No. 5 of Cheyne 
Row, which I had not seen for five and twenty years. The 
Statue I thought very good, though somewhat small and 
ill set-off by its dingy surroundings. And No. 5 (now 
24), which had cost her so much of her Life, one may say, 
to make habitable for him, now all neglected, unswept, un- 
garnished, uninhabited 



TO LET '' 



I cannot get it out of my head, the tarnished Scene of the 
Tragedy (one must call it) there enacted. 

Well, I was glad to get away from it, and the London 
of which it was a small part, and get down here to my own 
dull home, and by no means sorry not to be a Genius at 
such a Cost. " Parlous d'autres choses." 



208 LITERARY VERDICTS 

DiSCOVERNG THE BrONTE LITERATURE 

James Smetham to 

Sth Jan., 1856. 

I have just finished Yilleite and The Tenant of Wildfell 
Hall, having been seized with a desire and determination to 
know the whole Bronte literature; half impatient that I 
should be so swayed out of my regular course as to study 
with interest five novels. But indeed these things, though 
they contain some elements of the ordinary " founts of 
fictive tears/' are of another cast and purport to all other 
books. They are — Currer Bell's particularly — so far auto- 
biographic that one looks on them to be important revela- 
tions of a life that has been lived, and of thoughts that 
have been thought; no frivolous unworthy, ambitious life 
either, but something pure, strong, deep, tender, true, and 
reverential ; something that teaches one how to live. 

I know this, that I perceive principles and motives and 
purposes nobler than my own in several aspects of that 
quiet, shy, observant, and yet powerful nature which calls 
itself ^' Jane Eyre " and " Lucy Snowe," and hovers over 
Shirley and Caroline Helstone as their presiding genius 
and instinct. 

It is of no use for me to spurn the teaching because I 
have got it from a source I do not generally acknowledge 
as authoritative, nor to reply that it is fiction. What I 
refer to is not fiction, it is what has been lived, and may be 
lived. It is moral, and not imaginative, in its origin, and 
does not come (as I think) from a healthy or perfect moral 
nature, but from a noble one nevertheless. It reminds one 
of the Prometheus Yinctus; an enduring, age-long suffer- 
ing, unquenchable spirit, beset and bound by vast powers, 
Strength and Force ; and accompanied by a wailing chorus 
who alternately cheer and depress it ; with the vulture eter- 



JAMES SMETHAM 209 

nally gnawing, and the chain eternally galling it; never 
complaining, never undignified, and ever seeing beyond the 
present suffering the scintillations of distant sunrises, and 
hearing the music of invisible plumes "winnowing the 
crimson dawn," or the silver spikes of the aurora lace the 
hemisphere with crackling whispers. 

As to Wuthering Heights I can't find in my heart to 
criticise the book. If I were walking with you over those 
empurpled fells for an autumn day, startling the moor 
sheep and the lapwing with passionate talk, I could not 
criticise what I said or what you said. It would become 
sacred. The remembrance of it would make my heart 
swell and the tears come to my eyes in the midst of the 
stern, hard life of the city. And yet, if I could see it to 
be a duty, I should greatly enjoy shutting myself up in a 
lone farmhouse for three days in the winter to write a 
criticism on it. It is a wild, wailing, moorland wind, full 
of that unutterable love and anguish and mystery and pas- 
sion which form the substratum of high natures. Turner 
has a landscape which is it. It is those wild hills, and a 
storm is wuthering over them, and the molten lightning is 
licking the heather, and nobody knows it but the one soli- 
tary soul, which he has not put there, who is watching it 
from a window in the waste. 



VII 

Miscellaneous Verdicts 



Handel's gods are like Homer's, and his sublime never reaches 
beyond the region of the clouds. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

*' ' Crome — Crome — Crome ! ' blows the solemn wind of Fame, 
eerier than ever." 

James Smetham (1821-1889) 

"The fault of all German culture and the weakness of all Ger- 
man genius." 

Sidney Lanier (1842-1881) 



Handel's Gods are Like Homer's, and His Sublime 

Never Reaches Beyond the Region 

OF the Clouds 

Edward FitzGerald to F. Tennyson 

London, February 6, 1842. 
You talk of your Naples: and that one cannot under- 
stand Theocritus without having been on those shores. I 
tell you, you can't understand Macready without coming 
to London and seeing his revival of Acis and Galatea. 
You enter Drury Lane at a quarter to seven : the pit is al- 
ready nearly full : but you find a seat, and a very pleasant 
one. Box doors open and shut : ladies take off their shawls 
and seat themselves : gentlemen twist their side curls : the 
musicians come up from under the stage one by one; His 
just upon seven. Macready is very punctual : Mr. T. Cooke 
is in his place with his marshal's baton in his hand : he lifts 
it up: and off they set with old Handel's noble overture. 
As it is playing, the red velvet curtain (which Macready 
has substituted, not wisely, for the old green one) draws 
apart : and you see a rich drop scene, all festooned and ara- 
besqued with River Gods, Nymphs, and their emblems; 
and in the centre a delightful large, good copy of Poussin's 
great landscape (of which I used to have a print in my 
rooms) where the Cyclops is seen seated on a mountain, 
looking over the sea-shore. The overture ends, the drop 
scene rises, and there is the sea-shore, a long curling bay : 
the sea heaving under the moon, and breaking upon the 
beach, and rolling the surf down— the stage ! This really 

313 



214 MISCELLANEOUS VERDICTS 

capitally done. But enough of description. The choruses 
were well sung, and acted, well-dressed, and well-grouped; 
and the whole thing creditable and pleasant. Do you know 
the music? It is of Handel's best: and as classical as any 
man who wore a full-bottomed wig could write. I think 
Handel never gets out of his wig : that is, out of his age : his 
Hallelujah chorus is a chorus not of angels, but of well-fed 
earthly choristers, ranged tier above tier in a Gothic Cathe- 
dral, with princes for audience, and their military trum- 
pets flourishing over the full volume of the organ. Han- 
del's gods are like Homer's, and his sublime never reaches 
beyond the region of the clouds. Therefore I think that 
his great marches, triumphal pieces, and coronation an- 
thems, are his finest works. There is a little bit of Auber's, 
at the end of the Bayadere when the God resumes his 
divinity and retires into the sky, which has more of pure 
light and mystical solemnity than anything I know of 
Handel's: but then this is only a scrap: whereas old 
Handel's coursers, with necks with thunder clothed and 
long resounding pace, never tire. Beethoven thought more 
deeply also : but I don't know if he could sustain himself so 
weU. I suppose you will resent this praise of Beethoven: 
but you must be tired of the whole matter, written as it is 
in this vile hand : and so here is an end of it. . . . And 
now I am going to put on my night-cap : for my paper is 
nearly ended, and the iron tongue of St. Paul's, as reported 
by an East wind, has told twelve. This is the last news 
from the city. So Good night. 



JAMES SMETHAM 215 

" ' Crome — Crome — Crome ! ' Blows the Solemn 
Wind of Fame, Eerier than Ever " 

James Smetham to T. A. 

Sunday, 10 a. m. August, 1875. 
" O day most calm, most bright! " 

Landseer's Hunted Stag in "The Sanctuary," where 
"nor hound nor huntsman shall his lair molest/' among 
the peaceful echoing evening hills and the lonely rush of 
the disturbed wild ducks from the water flags into the 
amber air. This is not seldom the feeling with which I 
escape from the howling pack of week-day cares. 

JOHN CROME— BOEN in Norwich, 1769—1821 
Apprenticed to coach builder. 
Became Drawing Master. 
Painted in leisure. 

When I was a boy he was known among small dealers as 
" Old Crome." He was only 52 when he died. The name 
brought up the image of a venerable old fogey painting up 
to extreme old age. During the last ten years his pictures 
have been brought to the front, and he is called "John 
Crome." Some of his works are in the National Gallery, 
and at sales his pictures fetch large prices. 

Had an hour of delightful dwelling on his unknown 
career last evening. The works are the man, and if the 
man be able to put soul into them, whether he paint in a 
little house in Norwich or in a London studio matters 
little — nor how his picture is first sold. It may be bought 
after much talk by some little householder for £5. That 
is a vast sum. It hangs for years in the glimmer of the 
little back parlour, and no man knows much about it. 
Whether John Crome were married or single I know not; 



216 MISCELLANEOUS VERDICTS 

but probably he was married and his family large. Being a 
coach painter at first and a good deep painter afterwards, 
he could not be much beside. But what matter? Where 
would his scraps of Latin and Greek have been now? 
"While he lived he might have made better way with a 
transitory forgotten squire if he could quote Horace, but 
he and the squire are a prey to dumb forgetfulness — 
except — except what found its way to the point of his 
brush; his serious, sunny, all simple, all rich and happy 
views of the grandeur of the nooks of nature; the solemn, 
quiet corners where gray palings become impressive because 
of their weather marks and boundary marking and other 
subtle associations with nature and humanity. 

You meet him in your morning or evening walk, a little 
dingy, not at all gentlemanly, not like " quoloty " who pass 
him on horseback to their tombs among the forgotten. He 
has his leather-backed sketch-book out, and is taking a 
memorandum of some little black pool under oak roots, his 
bosom quietly glowing with the sense of grandeur and 
unutterable solemnity. He pockets his book and walks on ; 
the black pool and its weird growths rendered through the 
crucible of feeling and thought, and not wholly "like 
nature" (nature involved with man, which is art and 
poetry) — this picture now moves all kindred souls in now 
one exhibition, now another. Docks and weeds and peaty 
waters were nothing to talk about, but moving as the 
haunts of Keats' Pan when shaped by the coach painter's 
stubby brush, too manly to condescend to thin lines and 
photographic dottings. So whether he were communica- 
tive or close, shy or genial, good tempered or bad, a man 
with many friends raining " Good mornings " all around, 
or a sort of water hen scarce known except to his quaint 
kind — a few of the same sort — what has that to do with it 
now? Mark it with your brush, seal it in a monument. 



SIDNEY LANIER 217 

Arthur himself "passes." So with contemporary opinion. 
What thought the wealthy Norwich lawyer, with his frill 
and his weight, at Norwich dinner parties in 1800? " Mr. 
Quiddity, I should like to know what you think of the oils 
pictures of my daughter's drawing-master?" "What, 
Jack Crome? I knew him when he went 'prentice to old 
Axletree, and a lazy young dog he was. His oil paintings, 
ma-am? I'm no great judge, they look rather rough and 
fuzzy to me. Ought to go to Italy and see some of the 
Claudes I saw there in the year 1770." 

" Wliere be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, 
his tenures, and his tricks," and his opinion of Jack 
Crome ? 

" Crome — Crome — Crome ! " blows the solemn wind 
of Fame, eerier than ever — and the black pool with 
its crooked roots and strange overgrowth and " pipey hem- 
lock " looks, all silent and revealing nothing, into the 
face of new generations. 

" The Fault of Alt. German Cxtltuee and the 
Weakness of All German Genius " 

Sidney Lanier to his Wife 

New York, Sunday, October 18, 1874. 
I have been in my room all day ; and have just concluded 
a half-dozen delicious hours, during which I have been de- 
vouring with a hungry ferocity of rapture which I know 
not how to express, " The Life of Eobert Schumann," by 
his pupil, von Wasielewski. The pupil, I am sure, did not 
fully comprehend his great master. I think the key to 
Schumann's whole character, with all its labyrinthine and 
often disappointing peculiarities, is this : That he had no 
mode of self-expression, or, I should rather say, of self- 



218 MISCELLANEOUS VERDICTS 

expansion^ besides the musical mode. This may seem a 
strange remark to make of him who was the founder and 
prolific editor of a great musical journal and who perhaps 
exceeded any musician of his time in general culture. But 
I do not mean that he was confined to music for self- 
expression, though indeed, the sort of critical writing 
which Schumann did so much of is not at all like poetry in 
its tranquillizing effect upon the soul of the writer. What 
I do mean is that his sympathies were not hig enough, he 
did not go through the awful struggle of genius, and lash 
and storm and beat about until his soul was grown large 
enough to embrace the whole of life and the All of things, 
that is, large enough to appreciate (if even without under- 
standing) the magnificent designs of God, and tall enough 
to stand in the trough of the awful cross-waves of circum- 
stance and look over their heights along the whole sea of 
God's manifold acts, and deep enough to admit the peace 
that passeth understanding. This is, indeed, the fault of 
all German culture, and the weakness of all German genius. 
A great artist should have the sensibility and expressive 
genius of Schumann, the calm grandeur of Lee, the human 
breadth of Shakespeare, all in one. 

Now in this particular, of being open, unprejudiced, and 
unenvious, Schumann soars far above his brother Ger- 
mans; he valiantly defended our dear Chopin, and other 
young musicians who were struggling to make head against 
the abominable pettiness of German prejudice. But, 
withal, I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole : I 
cannot see him caring for his land, for the poor, for reli- 
gion, for humanity : he- was always a restless soul ; and the 
ceaseless wear of incompleteness finally killed, as a maniac, 
him whom a broader Love might have kept alive as a 
glorious artist to this day. 

The truth is, the world does not require enough at the 



SIDNEY LANIER ^19 

hands of genius. Under the special plea of greater sensi- 
bilities, and of consequent greater temptations, it excuses 
its gifted ones, and even sometimes makes " a law of their 
weakness/^ But this is wrong : the sensibility of genius is 
just as much greater to high emotions as to low ones; and 
whilst it subjects to stronger temptations, it at the same 
time interposes — if it will — stronger considerations for 
resistance. 

These are scarcely fair things to be saying apropos of 
Eobert Schumann ; for I do not think he was ever guilty of 
any excesses of genius — as they are called: I only mean 
them to apply to the unrest of his life. 

— And yet, for all I have said, how his music does burn 
in my soul ! It stretches me upon the very rack of delight ; 
I know no musician that fills me so full of heavenly 
anguish, and if I had to give up all the writers of music 
save one, my one should be Robert Schumann. 



VIII 

Rhymed Epistles 



" What things have we seen 
Done at the ' Mermaid ' / " 

Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) 

A reply to a Christmas invitation. 

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) 

The news at Oney. 

William Cowper (1731-1800) 

" The heart ay's the part ay, 

That makes us right or wrang." 

Rolert Burns (1759-1796) 

Enchanted. 

John Keats (1795-1821) 

An invitation to come fishing in Wales. 

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) 

Winter forenoons in the Parliament House. 

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 



" What Things Have We Seen 
Done at the ' Mermaid ' ! " 

Master Francis Beaumont's Letter to Ben Jonson 

[" Written before he and Master Fletcher came to Lon- 
don, with two of the precedent comedies, then not finished, 
which deferred their merry meeting at the Mermaid."] 

The sun (which doth the greatest comfort bring 
To absent friends^ because the selfsame thing 
They know, they see, however absent) is 
Here our best hay-maker (forgive me this ; 
It is our country's style) : in this warm shine 
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine. 
Oh, we have water mixed with claret lees. 
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies 
Than beer, good only for the sonnet's strain, 
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain ; 
So mixed that, given to the thirstiest one, 
'Twill not prove alms, unless he have the stone : 
I think with one draught man's invention fades, 
Two cups had quite spoiled Homer's Iliads; 
'Tis liquor that will find out Sutcliff e's wit : 
Lie where he will, and make him write worse yet : 
Filled with such moisture, in most grievous qualms, 
Did Robert Wisdom write his singing psalms; 
And so must I do this ; and yet I think 
It is a potion sent us down to drink. 
By special Providence, keeps us from fights. 
Makes us not laugh when we make legs to knights ; 
223 



224 RHYMED EPISTLES _ 

'Tis this that keeps our minds fit for our states, 

A medicine to obey our magistrates ; 

For we do live more free than you ; no hate, I 

No envy at one another's happy state, 

Moves us; we are all equal; every whit 

Of land, that God gives men here is their wit. 

If we consider fully ; for our best 

And gravest man will with his main house-jest 

Scarce please you ; we want subtil ty to do 

The city tricks, lie, hate, and flatter too; 

Here are none that can bear a painted show, 

Strike when you wince, and then lament the blow : 

Who, like mills set the right way for to grind. 

Can make their grain alike with every wind; 

Only some fellows, with the subtlest pate 

Amongst us, may perchance equivocate 

At selling of a horse, and that's the most ; 

Methinks the little wit I had is lost 

Since I saw you ; for wit is like a rest 

Held up at tennis, which men do the best 

With the best gamesters. What things have we seen 

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been 

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame. 

As if that every one from whence they came 

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. 

And had resolved to live a fool the rest 

Of his dull life ; then where there hath been thrown 

Wit able enough to justify the town 

For three days past : wit that might warrant be 

For the whole city to talk foolishly. 

Till that were cancelled ; and when that was gone. 

We left an air behind us, which alone 

Was able to make the next two companies 

Eight witty ; though but downright fools, more wise : 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 225 

When I remember this^ and see that now 

The country gentlemen begin to allow 

My wit for dry bobs, then I needs must cry, 

I see my days of ballating grow nigh ; 

I can already riddle, and can sing 

Catches, sell bargains, and I fear shall bring 

Myself to speak the hardest word I find 

Over as oft as any, with one wind 

That takes no medicines. But one thought of thee 

Makes me remember all these things to be 

The wit of our young men, fellows that shew 

No part of good, yet utter all they know; 

Who, like trees of the gard, have growing souls. 

Only strong Destiny, which all controls, 

I hope hath left a better fate in store 

For me, thy friend, than to live ever poor, 

Banished unto this home. Fate once again 

Bring me to thee, who canst make smooth and plain 

The way of knowledge for me, and then I 

Who have no good but in thy company, 

Protest it will my greatest comfort be 

To acknowledge all I have to flow from thee. 

Ben, when these scenes are perfect, we'll taste wine ; 

I'll drink thy Muse's health, thou shalt quaff mine. 

A Reply to a Christmas Invitation 
Oliver Goldsmith to Mrs. Bunhury * 
Madam.— December, 1772. 

I read your letter with all that allowance which critical 
candour could require, but after all find so much to object 
to, and so much to raise my indignation, that I cannot help 
^ Whose sister was Mary Horneck, known amongst her friends 
as the Jessamy Bride, with whom Goldsmith is supposed to have 
been in love. 



226 RHYMED EPISTLES 

giving it a serious answer. — I am not so ignorant, madam, 
as not to see there are many sarcasms contained in it, and 
solecisms also. (Solecism is a word that comes from the 
town of Soleis in Attica, among the Greeks, built by Solon, 
and applied as we use the word Kidderminster for curtains 
from a town also of that name — ^but this is learning you 
have no taste for!) — I say, madam, there are many sar- 
casms in it, and solecisms also. But not to seem an ill- 
natured critic, I'll take leave to quote your own words, and 
give you my remarks upon them as they occur. You begin 
as follows: 

I hope, my good Doctor, you soon will be here, 
And your spring-velvet coat very smart will appear, 
To open our ball the first day of the year. 

Pray, madam, where did you ever find the epithet 
" good " applied to the title of doctor ? Had you called me 
" learned doctor," or " grave doctor," or " noble doctor," it 
might be allowable, because they belong to the profession. 
But, not to cavil at trifles, you talk of my " spring-velvet 
coat," and advise me to wear it the first day in the year, 
that is, in the middle of winter! — a spring- velvet coat in 
the middle of winter! ! ! That would be a solecism in- 
deed ! and yet, to increase the inconsistence, in another part 
of your letter you call me a beau. Now, on one side or 
other you must be wrong. If I am a beau, I can never 
think of wearing a spring-velvet in winter ; and if I am not 
a beau, why then, that explains itself. But let me go on 
to your two next strange lines : 

And bring with you a wig, that is modish and gay. 
To dance with the girls that are makers of hay. 

The absurdity of making hay at Christmas you yourself 
seem sensible of: you say your sister will laugh; and so 
indeed she well may ! The Latins have ^n expression for a 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 227 

contemptuous kind of laughter, naso contemnere adunco; 

that is, to laugh with a crooked nose. She may laugh at 

you in the manner of the ancients if she thinks fit. But 

now I come to the most extraordinary of all extraordinary 

propositions, which is, to take your and your sister's advice 

in playing at loo. The presumption of the offer raises my 

indignation beyond the bounds of prose; it inspires me al; 

once with verse and resentment. I take advice? and from 

whom? You shall hear: 

First let me suppose, what may shortly be true, 

The company set, and the word to be Loo: 

All smirking, and pleasant, and big with adventure, 

And ogling the stake which is fixed in the centre. 

Eound and round go the cards, while I inwardly damn 

At never once finding a visit from Pam. 

I lay down my stake, apparently cool. 

While the harpies about me all pocket the pool. 

I fret in my gizzard, yet, cautious and sly, 

I wish all my friends may be bolder than I: 

Yet still they sit snug, not a creature will aim 

By losing their money to venture at fame. . . . 

'What does Mrs. Bunbury?' . . . 'I, Sir? I pass.' 

' Pray what does Miss Horneck ? take courage, come^ do.' 

' Who, I ? let me see. Sir, why I must pass too.' 

Mr. Bunbury frets, and I fret like the devil. 

To see them so cowardly, lucky, and civil. 

Yet still I sit snug, and continue to sigh on, 

Till, made by my losses as bold as a lion, 

I venture at all, while my avarice regards 

The whole pool as my own . . . ' Come, give me five 

cards.' 
' Well done ! ' cry the ladies : ' Ah, Doctor, that's good ! 
The pool's very rich, ... ah ! the Doctor is loo'd ! ' 
Thus foil'd in my courage, on all sides perplext. 



228 RHYMED EPISTLES 

I ask for advice from the lady that's next/ 
^ Pray, ma'am, be so good as to give your advice : 
Don't you think the best way is to venture f or't twice ? ' 
^ I advise/ cries the lady, ' to try it, I own. . . .' 
' Ah ! the Doctor is loo'd ! Come, Doctor, put down.' 
Thus, playing, and playing, I still grow more eager, 
And so bold, and so bold, I'm at last a bold beggar. 
Now, ladies, I ask, if law matters you're skill'd in. 
Whether crimes such as yours should not come before 

Fielding 
For giving advice that is not worth a straw. 
May well be call'd picking of pockets in law ; 
And picking of pockets, with which I now charge ye, 
Is, by quinto Elizabeth, Death without Clergy. 
What Justice, when both to the Old Bailey brought ! 
By the gods, I'll enjoy it, though 'tis but in thought ! 
Both are placed at the bar, with all proper decorum, 
With bunches of fennel, and nosegays before 'em; 
Both cover their faces with mobs and all that. 
But the judge bids them, angrily, take off their hat. 
When uncover'd, a buzz of inquiry runs round, 
^ Pray what are their crimes ? ' . . . ^ They've been 

pilfering found.' 
^But pray who have they pilfer'd?' . . . ^A doctor, 

I hear.' 
' What, yon solemn-faced, odd-loohing man that stands 

near ? ' 
^ The same.' . . . ' What a pity ! how does it surprise 

one, 
* Two handsomer culprits I never set eyes on!' 
Then their friends all come round me with cringing and 

leering. 
To melt me to pity, and soften my swearing. 
First Sir Charles advances, with phrases well-strung. 



WILLIAM COWPER 229 

^ Consider, dear Doctor, the girls are but young.' 

^ The younger the worse,' I return him again. 

^ It shows that their habits are all dyed in grain.' 

' But then they're so handsome, one's bosom it grieves.' 

^ What signifies handsome, when people are thieves ? ' 

^But where is your justice? their cases are hard.' 

' What signifies justice ? I want the reward.' 

'There's the parish of Edmonton offers forty pounds; 
there's the parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch, offers forty 
pounds ; there's the parish of Tyburn, from the Hog-in-the- 
pound to St. Giles's watch-house, offers forty pounds, — I 
shall have all that if I convict them ! ' — 
' But consider their case, ... it may yet be your own ! 
And see how they kneel ! Is your heart made of stone ? ' 
This moves ! ... so at last I agree to relent, 
For ten pounds in hand, and ten pounds to be spent. 

I challenge you all to answer this : I tell you, you can- 
not. It cuts deep. But now for the rest of the letter : and 
next — but I want room — so I believe I shall battle the rest 
out at Barton some day next week — I don't value you all ? 

0. G. 

The News atOlney 

William Cowper to the Rev. John Newton 

July 12, 1781. 
My very dear Friend, — I am going to send, what when 
you have read, you may scratch your head, and say, I sup- 
pose, there's nobody knows, whether what I have got be 
verse or not: by the tune and the time, it ought to be 
rhyme ; but if it be, did you ever see, of late or of yore, such 
a ditty before? The thought did occur to me and to her, 
as Madam and I, did walk and not fly, over hills and dales, 
with spreading sails, before it was dark, to Weston Park. 



230 RHYMED EPISTLES 

The news at Oney is little or noney, but such as it is, I 
send it, viz. — Poor Mr. Peace cannot yet cease addling his 
head with what you said, and has left parish-church quite 
in the lurch, having almost swore to go there no more. 

Page and his wife, that made such a strife, we met them 
twain in Dog Lane ; we gave them the wall, and that was 
all. For Mr. Scott, we have seen him not, except as he 
pass'd, in a wonderful haste, to see a friend in Silver End. 
Mrs. Jones proposes, ere July closes, that she and her sister, 
and her Jones Mister, and we that are here, our course shall 
steer to dine in the Spinney; but for a guinea, if the 
weather should hold so hot and so cold, we had better by far 
stay where we are. For the grass there grows while nobody 
mows (which is very wrong) so rank and long, that, so to 
speak, 'tis at least a week, if it happens to rain, ere it dries 
again. I have writ Charity, not for popularity, but as well 
as I could, in hopes to do good ; and if the Reviewer should 
say "to be sure, the gentleman's Muse wears Methodist 
shoes; you may know by her pace, and talk about grace, 
that she and her bard have little regard for the taste and 
fashions, and ruling passions, and hoidening play, of the 
modern day; and though she assume a borrowed plume, 
and now and then wear a tittering air, 'tis only her plan 
to catch if she can the giddy and gay, as they go that 
way, by a production on a new construction. She has 
baited her trap in hopes to snap all that may come with a 
sugar-plum." — 

His opinion in this will not be amiss ; 'tis what I intend, 
my principal end ; and if I succeed, and folks should read, 
till a few are brought to a serious thought, I shall think I 
am paid for all I have said and all I have done, though 
I have run, many a time, after a rhyme, as far as from 
hence to the end of my sense, and by hook or crook, write 
another book, if I live and am here, another year. I have 



ROBERT BURNS 231 

heard before, of a room with a floor laid upon springs and 
such like things, with so much art, in every part, that when 
you went in, you was forced to begin a minuet pace, with 
an air and a grace, swimming about, now in and now out, 
with a deal of state, in a figure of eight, without pipe or 
string, or any such thing ; and now I have writ, in a rhym- 
ing fit, what will make you dance, and as you advance, 
will keep you still, though against your will, dancing away, 
alert and gay, till you come to an end of what I penn'd; 
which that you may do ere Madam and you are quite worn 
out with jigging about, I take my leave, and here you 
receive a bow profound, down to the ground, from your 
humble me — W. C. 

PS^ — When I concluded, doubtless you did think me 
right, as well you might, in saying what I said of Scott; 
and then it was true, but now it is due to him to note, 
that since I wrote, himself and he has visited we. 

" The Heart Ay's the Part Ay, 
That Makes Us Right or Wrang " 

Robert Burns to Davie, a Brother Poet 

January, 1784. 
I 

While winds frae aff Ben-Lomond blaw, 
And bar the doors wi' drivin' snaw. 

And hing us owre the ingle, 
I set me down to pass the time, 
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme. 

In hamely, westlin jingle: 
While frosty winds blaw in the drift, 

Ben to the chimla lug, 
I grudge a wee the great-folk's gift. 

That live sae bien an' snug : 



232 RHYMED EPISTLES 

I tent less, and want less 
Their roomy fire-side; 

But hanker, and canker, 
To see their cursed pride. 



II 

It's hardly in a body's pow'r, 

To keep, at times, f rae being sour, 

To see how things are shar'd ; 
How best o' chiels are whyles in want. 
While coofs on countless thousands rant. 

And ken na how to ware't ; 
But Davie, lad, ne'er fash your head, 

Tho' we hae little gear ; 
We're fit to win our daily bread, 
As lang's we're hale and fier : 
" Mair spier na, nor fear na," 
Auld age ne'er mind a feg; 
The last o't, the warst o't. 
Is only but to beg. 



Ill 

To lie in kilns and barns at e'en, 

When banes are craz'd, and bluid is thin, 

Is, doubtless, great distress! 
Yet then content could make us blest ; 
Ev'n then, sometimes, we'd snatch a taste. 

Of truest happiness. 
The honest heart that's free f rae a' 

Intended fraud or guile. 
However Fortune kick the ba'. 

Has av some cause to smile ; 



ROBERT BURNS S38 

And mind still, you'll find still, 

A comfort this nae sma'; 
Nae mair then, we'll care then, 

Nae farther can we fa'. 



IV 

What tho', like commoners of air, 
We wander out, we know not where. 

But either house or hal' ? 
Yet Nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
The sweeping vales, and foaming floods. 

Are free alike to all. 
In days when daisies deck the ground, 

And blackbirds whistle clear. 
With honest joy our hearts will bound. 
To see the coming year: 

On braes when we please then, 

We'll sit an' sowth a tune ; 
Syne rhyme till't we'll time till't, 
An' sing't when we hae done. 



It's no in titles nor in rank : 

It's no in wealth like Lon'on Bank, 

To purchase peace and rest. 
It's no in makin' muckle, mair; 
It's no in books, it's no in lear. 

To make us truly blest : 
If happiness hae not her seat 

An' centre in the breast. 
We may be wise, or rich, or great. 

But never can be blest ! 



S34 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Nae treasures nor pleasures 
Could make us happy lang; 

The heart ay's the part ay 
That makes us right or wrang. 

VI 

Think ye, that sic as you and I, 

Wha drudge and drive thro' wet and dry, 

Wi' never ceasing toil; 
Think ye, are we less blest than they, 
Wha scarcely tent us in their way, 

As hardly worth their while? 
Alas ! how oft, in haughty mood, 

God's creatures they oppress! 
Or else, neglecting a' that's guid, 
They riot in excess ! 

Baith careless and fearless 

Of either Heaven or Hell; 
Esteeming and deeming 
It a' an idle tale ! 

VII 

Then let us chearfu' acquiesce, 
Nor make our scanty pleasures less 

By pining at our state: 
And, even should misfortunes come, 
I here wha sit hae met wi' some, 

An's thankfu' for them yet. 
They gie the wit of age to youth ; 

They let us ken oursel ; 
They make us see the naked truth. 

The real guid and ill : 
Tho' losses and crosses 
Be lessons right severe. 



ROBERT BURNS 235 

There's wit there, ye'll get there, 
Ye'll find nae other where. 

VIII 

But tent me, Davie, ace o' hearts ! 

(To say aught less wad wrang the cartes, 

And flatt'ry I detest) 
This life has joys for you and I ; 

And joys that riches ne'er could buy, 
And joys the very best. 
There's a' the pleasures o' the heart. 

The lover an' the f rien' : 
Ye hae your Meg, your dearest part. 
And I my darling Jean ! 
It warms me, it charms me 

To mention but her name : 
It heats me, it beets me. 
And sets me a' on flame ! 

IX 

all ye Powers who rule above ! 
Thou whose very self art love ! 

Thou know'st my words sincere ! 
The life-blood streaming thro' my heart. 
Or my more dear immortal part, 

Is not more fondly dear ! 
When heart-corroding care and grief 

Deprive my soul of rest. 
Her dear idea brings relief 
And solace to my breast. 
Thou Being All-seeing, 

0, hear my fervent pra/r ! 
Still take her, and make her 
Thy most peculiar care ! 



236 RHYMED EPISTLES 

X 

All hail! ye tender feelings dear! 
The smile of love, the friendly tear, 

The sympathetic glow ! 
Long since, this world's thorny ways 
Had number'd out my weary days, 

Had it not been for you ! 
Fate still has blest me with a friend 

In every care and ill; 
And oft a more endearing band, 
A tie more tender still. 
It lightens, it brightens 

The tenebrific scene. 
To meet with, and greet with 
My Davie or my Jean! 

XI 

0, how that Name inspires my style ! 
The words come skelpin' rank an' file, 

Amaist before I ken ! 
The ready measure rins as fine, 
As Phoebus and the famous Nine 

Were glowrin owre my pen. 
My spaviet Pegasus will limp. 

Till ance he's fairly het ; 
And then he'll hilch, an' stilt, an' jimp, 
And rin an unco fit; 

But least then, the beast then 
Should rue this hasty ride, 
I'll light now, and dight now 
His sweaty, wizen'd hide. 



JOHN KEATS 237 

Enchanted 

John Keats to John Hamilton Reynolds 

Little Britain, London 

Teignmouth, 
25 March, 1818. 
My dear Eeynolds^ 

In hopes of cheering you through a Minute or two, I was 
determined will he nill he to send you some lines, so you 
will excuse the unconnected subject and careless verse. 
You know, I am sure, Claude's Enchanted Castle, and I 
wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of it. The 
Eain is come on again — I think with me Devonshire stands 
a very poor chance. I shall damn it up hill and down dale, 
if it keep up to the average of six fine days in three weeks. 
Let me have better news of you. 

Tom's remembrances to you. Remember us to all. 
Your affectionate friend. 

John Keats. 

Dear Eeynolds ! as last night I lay in bed, 
There came before my eyes that wonted thread 
Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances. 
That every other minute vex and please : 
Things all disjointed come from north and south. 
Two Witch's eyes above a Cherub's mouth, 
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon. 
And Alexander with his nightcap on ; 
Old Socrates a-tying his cravat, 
And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth's cat; 
And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so, 
Making the best of's way towards Soho. 



238 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Few are there who escape these visitings, — 
Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings, 
And thro' whose curtains peeps no hellish nose, 
No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid's toes; 
But flowers bursting out with lusty pride. 
And young ^olian harps personify'd; 
Some Titian colours touch'd into real life, — 
The sacrifice goes on ; the pontiff knife 
Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows. 
The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows : 
A white sail shows above the green-head cliff. 
Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff ; 
The mariners join hymn with those on land. 

You know the Enchanted Castle — it doth stand 
Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake, 
Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake 
From some old magic-like Urganda's Sword. 
Phoebus ! that I had thy sacred word 
To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise, 
Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies ! 

You know it well enough, where it doth seem 
A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream ; 
You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles, 
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills, 
All which elsewhere are but half animate ; 
There do they look alive to love and hate. 
To smiles and frowns ; they seem a lifted mound 
Above some giant, pulsing underground. 

Part of the Building was a chosen See, 
Built by a banish'd Santon of Chaldee; 
The other part, two thousand years from him. 
Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim ; 



JOHN KEATS 239 

Then there's a little wing, far from the Sun, 
Built by a Lapland Witch turn'd maudlin Nun; 
And many other juts of aged stone 
Founded with many a mason-devil's groan. 

The doors all look as if they op'd themselves. 
The windows as if latch'd by Fays and Elves, 
And from them comes a silver flash of light. 
As from the westward of a Summer's night; 
Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes 
Gone mad thro' olden songs and poesies. 

See ! what is coming from the distance dim ! 
A golden Galley all in silken trim ! 
Three rows bf oars are lightening, moment whiles. 
Into the verd'rous bosoms of those isles; 
Towards the shade, under the Castle wall, 
It comes in silence, — now 'tis hidden all. 
The Clarion sounds, and from the Postern-gate 
An echo of sweet music doth create 
A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring 
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring, — 
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot, 
To all his friends, and they believe him not. 

that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, 
Would all their colours from the sunset take : 
From something of material sublime. 
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time 
In the dark void of night. For in the world 
We jostle, — ^but my flag is not unfurl'd 
On the Admiral-staff, — and so philosophize 
I dare not yet ! Oh, never will the prize. 
High reason, and the love of good and ill, 
Be my award ! Things cannot to the will 



240 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Be settled, but they tease us out of thought ; 
Or is it that imagination brought 
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin'd, 
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind, 
Cannot refer to any standard law 
Of either earth or heaven ? It is a flaw 
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn, — 
It forces us in summer skies to mourn, 
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale. 

Dear Eeynolds ! I have a mysterious tale, 
And cannot speak it; the first page I read 
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed 
Among the breakers; 'twas a quiet eve. 
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave 
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam 
Along the flat brown sand ; I was at home 
And should have been most happy, — ^but I saw 
Too far into the sea, where every maw 
The greater on the less feeds evermore. — 
But I saw too distinct into the core 
Of an eternal fierce destruction. 
And so from happiness I far was gone. 
Still am I sick of it, and tho', to-day, 
I've gather'd young spring-leaves, and flowers gay 
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry. 
Still do I that most fierce destruction see, — 
The Shark at savage prey, — the Hawk at pounce, — 
The gentle Eobin, like a Pard or Ounce, 
Eavening a worm, — Away, ye horrid moods ! 
Moods of one's mind ! You know I hate them well. 
You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell 
To some Kamtschatcan Missionary Church, 
Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch.. 



CHARLES KINGSLEY 241 

An Invitation to Come Fishing in Wales 

Charles Kingsley to Thomas Hughes, Esq. 

1856. 
Come away with me, Tom, 
Term and talk is done; 
My poor lads are reaping. 
Busy every one. 
Curates mind the parish. 
Sweepers mind the court, 
We'll away to Snowdon 
For our ten days' sport, 
Fish the August evening 
Till the eve is past. 
Whoop like boys at pounders 
Fairly played and grassed. 
When they cease to dimple. 
Lunge and swerve, and leap. 
Then up over Siabod, 
Choose our nest and sleep. 
Up a thousand feet, Tom, 
Eound the lion's head. 
Find soft stones to leeward 
And make up our bed. 
Eat our bread and bacon. 
Smoke the pipe of peace. 
And, ere we be drowsy. 
Give our boots a grease. 
Homer's heroes did so. 
Why not such as we ? 
What are sheets and servants? 
Superfluity. 

Pray for wives and children 
Safe in slumber curled. 



242 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Then to chat till midnight 
O'er this babbling world, 
Of the workman's college. 
Of the price of grain, 
Of the tree of knowledge, 
Of the chance of rain; 
If Sir A. goes Homeward, 
If Miss B. sings true, 
If the fleet comes homeward, 
If the mare will do, — 
Anything and ever5rthing, — 
Up there in the sky 
Angels understand us. 
And no '' saints " are by. 
Down, and bathe at day-dawn. 
Tramp from lake to lake, 
Washing brain and heart clean 
Every step we take. 
Leave to Robert Browning 
Beggars, fleas, and vines ; 
Leave to squeamish Ruskin 
Popish Apennines, 
Dirty Stones of Venice 
And his Gas-lamps Seven; 
We've the Stones of Snowdon 
And the lamps of heaven. 
Where's the mighty credit 
In admiring Alps? 
Any goose sees " glory " 
In their '^ snowy scalps." 
Leave such signs and wonders 
For the dullard brain. 
An aesthetic brandy. 
Opium and cayenne; 



CHARLES KINGSLEY 243 

Give me Bramchill common 
(St. John's harriers by), 
Or the Vale of Windsor, 
England's golden eye. 
Show me life and progress. 
Beauty, health, and man; 
Houses fair, trim gardens. 
Turn where'er I can. 
Or, if bored with '' High Art," 
And such popish stuff. 
One's poor ear needs airing, 
Snowdon's high enough. 
While we find God's signet 
Fresh on English ground, 
Wliy go gallivanting 
With the nations round ? 
Though we try no ventures 
Desperate or strange; 
Feed on common-places 
In a narrow range; 
Never sought for Franklin 
Eound the frozen capes : 
Even with Macdougall,^ 
Bagged our brace of apes; 
Never had our chance, Tom, 
In that black Eedan; 
Can't avenge poor Brereton 
Out in Sakarran; 
Tho' we earn our bread, Tom, 
By the dirty pen. 
What we can we will be, 
Honest Englishmen. 
Do the work that's nearest. 
Bishop of Labuan. 



244 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Though it's dull at whiles, 
Helping, when we meet them, 
Lame dogs over stiles ; 
See in every hedge-row 
Marks of angel's feet, 
Epics in each pebble 
Underneath our feet; 
Once a year, like schoolboys, 
Eobin-Hooding go. 
Leaving fops and fogies 
A thousand feet below. 

WiNTEE Forenoons in the Parliament House 

Robert Louis Stevenson to Charles Baxter 

[Edinburgh, October, 1875.J 
Noo lyart leaves blaw ower the green. 
Red are the bonnie woods o' Dean, 
An' here we're back in Embro, freen', 

To pass the winter. 
WHilk noo, wi' frosts afore, draws in. 

An' snaws ahint her. 

I've seen's hae days to f richt us a'. 
The Pentlands poothered weel wi' snaw. 
The ways half-smoored wi' liquid thaw. 

An' half-congealin'. 
The snell an' scowtherin' norther blaw 

Frae blae Brunteelan'. 

I've seen's been unco sweir to sally, 
And at the door-cheeks daff and dally 
Seen's daidle thus an' shilly-shally 
For near a minute — 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 245 

Sae cauld the wind blew up the valley, 
The deil was in it ! — 

Syne spread the silk an' tak the gate, 
In blast an' blaudin' rain, deil hae 't ! 
The hale toon glintin', stane an' slate, 

Wi' cauld an' weet. 
An' to the Court, gin we'se be late. 

Bicker oor feet. 

And at the Court, tae, aft I saw 
Whaur Advocates by twa an' twa 
Gang gesterin' end to end the ha' 

In weeg an' goon, 
To crack o' what ye wull but Law 

The hale forenoon. 

That muckle ha', maist like a kirk, 
I've kent at braid mid-day sae mirk 
Ye'd seen white weegs an' faces lurk 

Like ghaists f rae Hell, 
But whether Christian ghaists or Turk 

Deil ane could tell. 

The three fires lunted in the gloom. 
The wind blew like the blast o' doom, 
The rain upo' the roof abune 

Played Peter Dick — 
Ye wad nae licht enough i' the room 

Your teeth to pick I 

But, freend, ye ken how me an' you. 
The ling-lang lanely winter through, 
Keep'd a guid speerit up, an' true 

To lore Horatian, 
We aye the ither bottle drew 

To inclination. 



246 RHYMED EPISTLES 

Sae let us in the comin' days 

Stand sicker on our auncient ways — 

The strauchtest road in a' the maze 

Since Eve ate apples; 
An' let the winter weet our cla'es — 

•We'll weet oor thrapples. 



IX 

Familiar Letters 



Arguments against swearing. 

James Howell ( 1594 f -1666) 

Boswelliana. 

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) 

Rajahs, cranks, Virgil, literary good advice, and an entirely new 
method of preventing men from swearing falsely. 

Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) 

From a distant land. 

Mary Taylor (1816-1893) 

Invitation to join in the founding of a Misanthropic Society. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) 

Reading compared to sailing, and the French Revolution to a 
rough running sea. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

Musical biography and the meaning of music. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

A good fire, a cat and a dog on the rug, and an old woman in 

the kitchen. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 

New Year's Eve. 

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883) 



Arguments Against Swearing 

James Howell to Captain Thomas B. 

York, Aug. 1, 1628. 
Noble Captain 

Yours of the 1st of March was delivered me by Sir Eich- 
ard Scot, and I hold it no profanation of this Sunday even- 
ing, considering the quality of my subject, and having — I 
thank God for it — performed all church duties, to employ 
some hours to meditate on you, and send you this friendly 
salute, though I confess in an unusual monitory way. My 
dear Captain, I love you perfectly well; I love both your 
person and parts, which are not vulgar ; I am in love with 
your disposition, which is generous, and I verily think you 
were never guilty of any pusillanimous act in your life. 
Nor is this love of mine conferred upon you gratis, but you 
may challenge it as your due, and by way of correspond- 
ence, in regard of those thousand convincing evidences you 
have given me of yours to me, which ascertain me that you 
take me for a true friend. Now, I am of the number of 
those that had rather commend the virtue of an enemy 
than soothe the vices of a friend ; for your own particular, 
if your parts of virtue and infirmities were cast into a 
balance, I know the first would outpoise the other ; yet give 
me leave to tell you that there is one frailty, or rather ill- 
favoured custom, that reigns in you, which weighs much; 
it is a humour of swearing in all your discourses, and they 
are not slight, but deep far-fetched oaths that you are wont 
to rap out, which you use as flowers of rhetoric to enforce 
a faith upon the hearers, who believe you never the more; 

249 



250 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

and you use this in cold blood when you are not provoked, 
which makes the humour far more dangerous. I know 
many — and I cannot say I myself am free from it, God 
forgive me — that, being transported with choler, and as it 
were, made drunk with passion by some sudden provoking 
accident, or extreme ill-fortune at play, will let fall oaths 
and deep protestations ; but to belch out, and send forth, as 
it were, whole volleys of oaths and curses in a calm humour, 
to verify every trivial discourse, is a thing of horror. I 
know a king that, being crossed in his game, would amongst 
his oaths fall on the ground, and bite the very earth in the 
rough of his passion; I heard of another king — Henry IV 
of France — that in his highest distemper would swear by 
'' Ventre de Saint Gris " (By the belly of St. Gris) ; I 
heard of an Italian that, having been accustomed to blas- 
pheme, was weaned from it by a pretty wile, for, having 
been one night at play, and lost all his money, after many 
execrable oaths, and having offered money to another to 
go out to face heaven and defy God, he threw himself 
upon a bed hard by, and there fell asleep. The otlier 
gamesters played on still, and finding that he was fast 
asleep, they put out the candles, and made a semblance 
to play on still; they fell a wrangling and spoke so loud 
that he awaked : he, hearing them play on still, fell a rub- 
bing his eyes, and his conscience presently prompted him 
that he was struck blind, and that God's judgment had 
deservedly fallen down upon him for his blasphemies, and 
so he fell to sigh and weep pitifully. A ghostly father was 
sent for, who undertook to do some acts of penance for 
him, if he would make a vow never to play again or blas- 
pheme, which he did; and so the candles were lighted 
again, which he thought were burning all the while ; so he 
became a perfect convert. I could wish this letter might 
produce the same effect in you. There is a strong text. 



JAMES HOWELL 251 

that the curse of heaven hangs always over the dwelling 
of the swearer, and you have more fearful examples of 
miraculous judgments in this particular, than of any other 
sin. 

There is a little town in Languedoc, in France, that 
hath a multitude of the pictures of the Virgin Mary up and 
down; but she is made to carry Christ in her right arm, 
contrary to the ordinary custom ; and the reason they told 
me was this, that two gamesters being at play, and one 
having lost all his money, and bolted out many blasphemies, 
he gave a deep oath, that that jade upon the wall, meaning 
the picture of the blessed Virgin, was the cause of his ill- 
luck; hereupon the child removed imperceptibly from the 
left arm to the right, and the man fell stark dumb ever 
after ; thus went the tradition there. This makes me think 
upon the I^ady Southwell's news from Utopia, that he who 
sweareth when he playeth at dice, may challenge his dam- 
nation by way of purchase. This infamous custom of swear- 
ing, I obsen^e, reigns in England lately more than anywhere 
else ; though a German in his highest puff of passion swear 

a hundred thousand sacraments, the Italian by , 

the French by God's death, the Spaniard by his flesh, 
the Welshman by his sweat, the Irishman by his five 
wounds, though the Scot commonly bids the devil ha'e 
his soul, yet, for a variety of oaths, the English roarers 
put down all. Consider well what a dangerous thing it is 
to tear in pieces that dreadful name, which makes the 
vast fabric of the world to tremble, that holy name wherein 
the whole hierarchy of heaven doth triumph, that blissful 
name, wherein consists the fulness of all felicity. I know 
this custom in you yet is but a light disposition; 'tis no 
habit, I hope ; let me, therefore, conjure you by that power, 
friendship, by that holy league of love which is between 
us, that you would suppress it, before it come to that ; for 



252 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

I must tell you that those who could find it in their hearts 
to love you for many other things, do disrespect you for 
this : they hate your company, and give no credit to what- 
soever you say, it being one of the punishments of a 
swearer, as well as of a liar, not to be believed when he 
speaks truth. 

Excuse me that I am so free with you; what I write 
proceeds from the current of a pure affection, and I shall 
heartily thank you, and take it for an argument of love, 
if you tell me of my weaknesses, which are — God wot — too, 
too many; for my body is but a Cargazon of corrupt 
humours, and being not able to overcome them all at once, 
I do endeavour to do it by degrees, like Sertorius his 
soldier, who, when he could not cut off the horse's tail at 
one blow with his sword, fell to pull out the hairs one by 
one. And touching this particular humour from which I 
dissuade you, it hath raged in me too often by contingent 
fits, but thank God for it, I find it much abated and 
purged. Now, the only physic I used was a precedent fast, 
and recourse to the holy sacrament the next day, of purpose 
to implore pardon for what had passed, and power for 
the future to quell those exorbitant motions, those ravings 
and feverish fits of the soul; in regard there are no in- 
firmities more dangerous, for at the same instant they have 
being, they become impieties. And the greatest symptom 
of amendment I find in me is, because whensoever, I hear 
the holy name of God blasphemed by any other, it makes 
my heart to tremble within my breast ; now, it is a peniten- 
tial rule, that if sins present do not please thee, sins past 
will not hurt thee. All other sins have for their object 
either pleasure or profit, or some aim or satisfaction to body 
or mind, but this hath none at all ; therefore fie upon't, my 
dear Captain; try whether you can make a conquest of 
yourself in subduing this execrable custom. Alexander 



LORD MACAULAY 253 

subdued the world, Caesar his enemies, Hercules monsters, 
but he that overcomes himself is the true valiant captain. 

BOSWELLIANA 

Lord Macaulay to Hannah and Margaret Macaulay 

London : June 7, 1831. 

Yesterday I dined at Marshall's and was almost con- 
soled for not meeting Eamohun Eoy by a very pleasant 
party. The great sight was the two wits, Eogers and Syd- 
ney Smith. Singly I have often seen them; but to see 
them both together was a novelty, and a novelty not the 
less curious because their mutual hostility is well known, 
and the hard hits which they have given to each other 
are in everybody's mouth. They were very civil, however. 
But I was struck by the truth of what Matthew Bramble, 
a person of whom you probably never heard, says in Smol- 
lett's Humphrey Clinker : that one wit in a company, like 
a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a flavour : but two are too 
many. Eogers and Sydney Smith would not come into 
conflict. If one had possession of the company, the other 
was silent; and, as you may conceive, the one who had 
possession of the company was always Sydney Smith, and 
the one who was silent was always Eogers. Sometimes, 
however, the company divided, and each of them had a 
small congregation. I had a good deal of talk with both 
of them; for, in whatever they may disagree, they agree 
in always treating me with very marked kindness. 

I had a good deal of pleasant conversation with Eogers. 
He was telling me of the curiosity and interest which 
attached to the persons of Sir Walter Scott and Lord 
Byron. When Sir Walter Scott dined at a gentleman's 
in London some time ago, all the servant-maids in the 
house asked leave to stand in the passage and see him pass. 



g54 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

He was, as you may conceive, greatly flattered. About 
Lord Byron, whom he knew well, he told me some curious 
anecdotes. When Lord Byron passed through Florence, 
Rogers was there. They had a good deal of conversation, 
and Rogers accompanied him to his carriage. The inn 
had fifty windows in front. All the windows were crowded 
with women, mostly English women, to catch a glance at 
their favourite poet. Among them were some at whose 
houses he had often been in England, and with whom he 
had lived on friendly terms. He would not notice them, 
or return their salutations. Rogers was the only person 
that he spoke to. 

The worst thing that I know about Lord B3rron is the 
very unfavourable impression which he made on men, 
who certainly were not inclined to judge him harshly, and 
who, as far as I know, were never personally ill-used by 
him. Sharp and Rogers both speak of him as an unpleasant, 
affected, splenetic person. I have heard hundreds and 
thousands of people who never saw him rant about him: 
but I never heard a single expression of fondness for him 
fall from the lips of any of those who knew him well. Yet, 
even now, after the lapse of five-and-twenty years, there are 
those who cannot talk for a quarter of an hour about 
Charles Fox without tears. 

Sydney Smith leaves London on the 20th, the day before 
Parliament meets for business. I advised him to stay, and 
see something of his friends who would be crowding to 
London. " My flock ! " said this good shepherd. " My 
dear Sir, remember my flock ! 

" The hungry sheep look up and are not fed," 

I could say nothing to such an argument; but I could not 
help thinking that, if Mr. Daniel Wilson had said such 
a thing, it would infallibly have appeared in his funeral 



LORD MACAULAY 255 

sermon, and in his Life by Baptist Noel. But in poor Syd- 
ney's mouth it sounded like a Joke. He begged me to come 
and see him at Combe Florey. " There I am, Sir, the 
priest of the Flowery Valley, in a delightful parsonage, about 
which I care a good deal, and a delightful country, about 
which I do not care a straw." I told him that my meeting 
him was some compensation for missing Eamohun Ko5^ 
Sydney broke forth : " Compensation ! Do you mean to 
insult me ? A beneficed clergyman, an orthodox clerg3rman, 
a nobleman's chaplain, to be no more than compensation 
for a Brahmin; and a heretic Brahmin too, a fellow who 
has lost his owti religion and can't find another; a vile 
heterodox dog, who, as I am credibly informed eats beef- 
steaks in private ! A man who has lost his caste ! who ought 
to have melted lead poured down his nostrils, if the good 
old Vedas were in force as they ought to be." 

These are some Boswelliana of Sydney; not very clerical, 
you will say, but indescribably amusing to the hearers, 
whatever the readers may think of them. Nothing can 
present a more striking contrast to his rapid, loud, laugh- 
ing utterance, and his rector-like amplitude and rubicund- 
ity, than the low, slow, emphatic tone, and the corpse-like 
face of Eogers. There is as great a difference in what they 
say as in the voice and look with which they say it. The 
conversation of Eogers is remarkably polished and artificial. 
What he says seems to have been long meditated, and might 
be published with little correction. Sydney talks from the 
impulse of the moment, and his fun is quite inexhaustible. 

Ever yours 

T. B. M. 



^56 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

Rajahs, Cranks, Virgii., Literary Good Advice, and 

AN Entirely New Method of Preventing 

Men from Swearing Falsely 

Lord Macaulay to TJiomas Flower Ellis 

Ootacamund : July 1, 1834. 

Dear Ellis^ — You need not get your map to see where 
Ootacamund is : for it has not found its way into the maps. 
It is a new discovery ; a place to which Europeans resort for 
their health, or, as it is called by the Company's servants, — 
blessings on their learning, — a sanaterion. It lies at the 
height of 7,000 feet above the sea. 

While London is a perfect gridiron, here am I, at 13° 
North from the equator, by a blazing wood fire, with my 
windows closed. My bed is heaped with blankets, and my 
black servants are coughing round me in all directions. 
One poor fellow in particular looks so miserably cold that, 
unless the sun comes out, I am likely soon to see under 
my own roof the spectacle which, according to Shakespeare, 
is so interesting to the English, — a dead Indian.^ 

I travelled the whole four hundred miles between this 
and Madras on men's shoulders. I had an agreeable jour- 
ney on the whole. I was honoured by an interview with 
the Rajah of Mysore, who insisted on showing me all his 
wardrobe, and his picture gallery. He has six or seven 
coloured English prints, not much inferior to those which 
I have seen in the sanded parlour of a country inn ; " Going 
to Cover," " The Death of the Fox," and so forth. But the 
bijou of this gallery, of which he is as vain as the Grand 
Duke can be of the Venus, or Lord Carlisle of the Three 
Maries, is a head of the Duke of Wellington, which has, 
most certainly, been on a sign-post in England. 
^ The Tempest, act ii., scene 2. 



LORD MACAULAY 257 

Yet, after all, the Rajah was by no means the greatest 
fool whom I found at Mysore. I alighted at a bungalow 
appertaining to the British Eesidency. There I found an 
Englishman who, without any preface, accosted me thus: 
" Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do not you think that Buonaparte 
was the Beast?" "No, Sir, I cannot say that I do." 
" Sir, he was the Beast. I can prove it. I have found the 
number 666 in his name. Why, Sir, if he was not the Beast, 
who was ? " This was a puzzling question, and I am not 
a little vain of my answer. " Sir," said I, " the House of 
Commons is the Beast. There are 658 members of the 
House; and these, with their chief officers, — the three 
clerks, the Sergeant and his deputy, the Chaplain, the door- 
keeper, and the librarian,— make 666.'' " Well, Sir, that 
is strange. But I can assure you that, if you write Napo- 
leon Buonaparte in Arabic, leaving out only two letters, 
it will give 666." " And pray. Sir, what right have you 
to leave out two letters? And, as St. John was writing 
Greek, and to Greeks, is it not likely that he would use the 
Greek rather than the Arabic notation?" "But, Sir," 
said this learned divine, " everybody knows that the Greek 
letters were never used to mark numbers," I answered 
with the meekest look and voice possible : " I do not think 
that everybody knows that. Indeed I have reason to be- 
lieve that a different opinion, — erroneous no doubt, — is 
universally embraced by all the small minority who happen 
to know any Greek." So ended the controversy. The man 
looked at me as if he thought me a very wicked fellow; and, 
I dare say, has by this time discovered that, if you write 
my name in Tamul, leaving out T in Thomas, B in Bab- 
ington, and M in Macaulay, it will give the number of 
this unfortunate Beast. 

I am very comfortable here. The Governor-General is 
the frankest and best-natured of men. The chief function- 



258 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

aries, who have attended him hither, are clever people, but 
not exactly on a par as to general attainments with the 
society to which I belonged in London. I thought, how- 
ever, even at Madras, that I could have formed a very 
agreeable circle of acquaintance; and I am assured that 
at Calcutta I shall find things far better. After all, the 
best rule in all parts of the world, as in London itself, is to 
be independent of other men's minds. My power of find- 
ing amusement without companions was pretty well tried 
on my voyage. I read insatiably; the Iliad and Odyssey, 
Virgil, Horace, Caesar's Commentaries, Bacon de Augmen- 
tis, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gib- 
bon's Rome, Mill's India, all of the seventy volumes of 
Voltaire, Sismondi's History of France, and the seven 
thick folios of the Biographia Britannica. I found my 
Greek and Latin in good condition enough. I liked the 
Iliad a little less, and the Odyssey a great deal more than 
formerly. Horace charmed me more than ever ; Virgil not 
quite so much as he used to do. The want of human 
character, the poverty of his supernatural machinery, 
struck me very strongly. Can anything be so bad as the 
living bush which bleeds and talks, or the Harpies who 
befoul ^neas's dinner? It is as extravagant as Ariosto, 
and as dull as Wilkie's Epigoniad. The last six books, 
which Virgil had not fully corrected, pleased me better 
than the first six. I like him best on Italian ground. I 
like his localities; his national enthusiasm; his frequent 
allusions to his country, its history, its antiquities, and its 
greatness. In this respect he often reminded me of Sir 
Walter Scott, with whom, in the general character of his 
mind, he had very little affinity. The Georgics pleased me 
better; the Eclogues best, — the second and tenth above all. 
But I think the finest lines in the Latin language are those 
&ve which begin, 



LORD MACAULAY 259 

" Sepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala — " * 

I cannot tell yon how they struck me. I was amused to 
find that Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest 
in Virgil. 

I liked the Jerusalem better than I used to do. I was 
enraptured with Ariosto; and I still think of Dante, as I 
thought when I first read him, that he is a superior poet 
to Milton, that he runs neck and neck with Homer, and 
that none but Shakespeare has gone decidedly beyond him. 

As soon as I reach Calcutta I intend to read Herodotus 
again. By the bye, why do not you translate him? You 
would do it excellently; and a translation of Herodotus, 
well executed, would rank with original compositions. A 
quarter of an hour a day would finish the work in five years. 
The notes might be made the most amusing in the world. 
I wish you would think of it. At all events, I hope you 
will do something which may interest more than seven or 
eight people. Your talents are too great, and your leisure 
time too small, to be wasted in inquiries so frivolous, (I 
must call them,) as those in which you have of late been 
too much engaged ; whether the Cherokees are of the same 
race with the Chickasaws; whether Van Diemen's Land 
was peopled from New Holland, or New Holland from 
Van Diemen's Land ; what is the precise mode of appoint- 
ing a headman in a village in Timbuctoo. I would not 
give the worst page in Clarendon or Fra Paolo for all that 
ever was, or ever will be, written about the migrations of 
the Leleges and the laws of the scans. 

I have already entered on my public functions, and I 
hope to do some good. The very wigs of the Judges in the 
Court of King's Bench would stand on end if they knew 
how short a chapter my Law of Evidence will form. I am 
not without many advisers. A native of some fortune in 
^ Eclogue viii., 37. 



260 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

Madras has sent me a paper on legislation. " Your honour 
must know," says this judicious person, "that the great 
evil is that men swear falsely in this country. No judge 
knows what to believe. Surely if your honour can make 
men to swear truly, your honour's fame will be great, and 
the Company will flourish. Now, I know how men may 
be made to swear truly; and I will tell your honour for 
your fame, and for the profit of the Company. Let your 
honour cut off the great toe of the right foot of every man 
who swears falsely, whereby your honour's fame will be 
extended." Is not this an exquisite specimen of legislative 
wisdom ? 

I must stop. When I begin to write to England, my pen 
runs as if it would run on for ever. 

Ever yours affectionately 

T. B. M. 

From a Distant Land 

Mary Taylor ^ to Charlotte Bronte 

I 

Wellington, New Zealand, 
July 24:th, 1849. 
Dear Charlotte^ — About a month since I received and 
read Jane Eyre. It seemed to me incredible that you had 
actually written a book. Such events did not happen 

* Charlotte Bronte's three most intimate girl friends were Ellen 
Nussey, Mary Taylor, and Laetitia Wheelwright; of these Mary 
Taylor was the second best — she is the " Rose Yorke " of Shirley. 
Charlotte Bronte, Ellen Nussey, and Mary Taylor first met at 
Roe Head School, when Charlotte and Mary were fifteen years 
of age. Mary Taylor, whose pet-name was " Pag," went on a long 
visit to Brussels; her example led the way for Charlotte and 
Emily Bronte to establish themselves at the Pensionnat Heger — 
the storm centre of Villette. Later she went to New Zealand, 
that she might earn her own living there. About 1859, or 1860, 
she returned to England, and lived in seclusion upon the York- 



MARY TAYLOR 261 

while I was in England. I begin to believe in your exist- 
ence much as I do in Mr. Eochester's. In a believing mood 
I don't doubt either of them. After I had read it I went 
on to the top of Mount Victoria and looked for a ship to 
carry a letter to you. There was a little thing with one 
mast, and also H.M.S. Fly, and nothing else. If a cattle 
vessel came from Sydney she would probably return in a 
few days, and would take a mail, but we have had east 
winds for a; month and nothing can come in. 

Aug. 1. — ^The Harlequin has just come from Otago, and 
is to sail for Singapore wlien the wind changes, and by 
that route (which I hope to take myself sometime) I send 
you this. Much good may it do you. Your novel surprised 
me by being so perfect as a work of art. I expected some- 
thing more changeable and unfinished. You have polished 
to some purpose. If I were to do so I should get tired, 
and wear}^ every one else in about two pages. No sign of 
this weariness in your book — ^you must have had abundance, 
having kept it all to yourself ! 

You are very different from me in having no doctrine 
to preach. It is impossible to squeeze a moral out of your 
production. Has the world gone so well with you that you 
have no protest to make against its absurdities? Did you 
never sneer or declaim in your first sketches ? I will scold 
you well when I see you. I do not believe in Mr. Elvers. 
There are no good men of the Brocklehurst species. A mis- 
sionary either goes into his office for a piece of bread, or 
he goes from enthusiasm, and that is both too good and 
too bad a quality for St. John. It's a bit of your absurd 
charity to believe in such a man. You have done wisely in 
shire moors. In 1890, when quite an old lady, she published 
her first and only novel — Miss Miles, — the purpose of which is to 
teach that women ought to make themselves independent of the 
other sex. At High Royd, Yorkshire, March, 1893, she died at 
the age of seventy-six. 



262 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

choosing to imagine a high class of readers. You never 
stop to explain or defend anything, and never seem both- 
ered with the idea. If Mrs. Fairfax or any other well- 
intentioned fool gets hold of this what will she think? 
And yet, yon know, the world is made up of such, and 
worse. Once more, how have you written through three 
volumes without declaring war to the knife against a few 
dozen absurd doctrines, each of which is supported by " a 
large and respectable class of readers"? Emily seems to 
have had such a class in her eye when she wrote that 
strange thing Wuthering Heights. Anne, too, stops re- 
peatedly to preach commonplace truths. She has had a 
still lower class in her mind's eye. Emily seems to have 
followed the bookseller's advice. As to the price you got, 
it was certainly Jewish. But what could the people do? 
If they had asked you to fix it, do you know yourself how 
many ciphers your sum would have had ? And how should 
they know better? And if they did, that's the knowledge 
they get their living by. If I were in your place, the idea 
of being bound in the sale of two more would prevent me 
from ever writing again. Yet you are probably now busy 
with another. It is curious for me to see among the old 
letters one from Anne sending a copy of a whole article on 
the currency question written by Fonblanque! I exceed- 
ingly regret having burnt your letters in a fit of caution, 
and I've forgotten all the names. Was the reader Albert 
Smith? What do they all think of you? 

I mention the book to no one and hear no opinions. I 
lend it a good deal because if s a novel, and ifs as good as 
another! They say " it makes them cry." They are not 
literary enough to give an opinion. If ever I hear one I'll 
embalm it for you. As to my own affair, I have written 
100 pages, and lately 50 more. It's no use writing faster. 
I get so disgusted, I can do nothing. 



MARY TAYLOR 263 

If I could command sufficient money for a twelve- 
month, I would go home by way of India and write my 
travels, which would prepare the way for my novel. With 
the benefit of your experience I should perhaps make a bet- 
ter bargain than you. I am most afraid of my health. 
Not that I should die, but perhaps sink into a state of be- 
tweenity, neither well nor ill, in which I should observe 
nothing, and be very miserable besides. My life here is 
not disagreeable. I have a great resource in the piano, and 
a little employment in teaching. 

It's a pity you don't live in this world, that I might en- 
tertain you about the price of meat. Do you know, I 
bought six heifers the other day for £23, and now it is 
turned so cold I expect to hear one-half of them are dead. 
One man bought twenty sheep for £8, and they are all dead 
but one. Another bought 150 and has 40 left. 

I have now told you everything I can think of except 
that the cat's on the table and that I'm going to borrow a 
new book to read — no less than an account of all the sys- 
tems of philosophy of modern Europe. I have lately met 
with a wonder, a man who thinks Jane Eyre would have 
done better to marry Mr. Rivers! He gives no reason — 

such people never do. T,r m 

^ ^ Mary Taylor. 

II 

Wellington, New Zealand. 
Dear Charlotte^ — I have set up shop ; I am delighted 
with it as a whole — that is, it is as pleasant or as little dis- 
agreeable as you can expect an emplojrment to be that you 
earn your living by. The best of it is that your labour has 
some return, and you are not forced to work on hopelessly 
without result. Du reste, it is very odd. I keep looking at 
myself with one eye while I'm using the other, and I some- 
times find myself in very queer positions. Yesterday I 



264 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

went along the shore past the wharfes and several ware- < 
houses on a street where I had never been before during all 
the five years I have been in Wellington. I opened the door 
of a long place filled with packages, with passages up the 
middle, and a row of high windows on one side. At the 
far end of the room a man was writing at a desk beneath 
a window. I walked all the length of the room very slowly, | 
for what I had come for had completely gone out of my 
head. Fortunately the man never heard me until I had 
recollected it. Then he got up, and I asked him for some 
stone-blue, saltpetre, tea, pickles, salt, etc. He was very 
civil. I bought some things and asked for a note of them. 
He went to his desk again; I looked at some newspapers 
lying near. On the top was a circular from Smith & 
Elder, containing notices of the most important new works. 
The first and longest was given to Shirley, a book I had 
seen mentioned in the Manchester Examiner as written by 
Currer Bell." I blushed all over. The man got up, folding 
the note. I pulled it out of his hand and set off to the 
door, looking odder than ever, for a partner had come in 
and was watching. The clerk said something about sending 
them, and I said something too — I hope it was not very 
silly — and took my departure. 

I have seen some extracts from Shirley in which you 
talk of women working. And this first duty, this great 
necessity, you seem to think that some women may indulge 
in, if they give up marriage, and don't make themselves 
too disagreeable to the other sex. You are a coward and a 
traitor. A woman who works is by that alone better than 
one who does not ; and a woman who does not happen to be 
rich and who still earns no money and does not wish to do 
so, is guilty of a great fault, almost a crime — a dereliction 
of duty which leads rapidly and almost certainly to all man- 
* Charlotte Bronte's nom de plume. 



MARY TAYLOR 265 

ner of degradation. It is very wrong of you to plead for 
toleration for workers on the ground of their being in pecu- 
liar circumstances, and few in number or singular in dis- 
position. Work or degradation is the lot of all except the 
very small number born to wealth. 

Ill 

Wellington, N. Z., April 3rd, 1850. 
Dear Charlotte, — About a week since I received your 
last melancholy letter with the account of Anne's death* 
and your utter indifference to everything, even to the suc- 
cess of your last book. Though you do not say this, it is 
pretty plain to be seen from the style of your letter. It 
seems to me hard indeed that you who would succeed, 
better than any one, in making friends and keeping them, 
should be condemned to solitude from your poverty. To 
no one would money bring more happiness, for no one 
would use it better than you would. For me, with my 
headlong self-indulgent habits, I am perhaps better with- 
out it, but I am convinced it would give you great and 
noble pleasures. Look out then for success in writing ; you 
ought to care as much for that as you do for going to 
Heaven. Though the advantages of being employed ap- 
pear to you now the best part of the business, you will soon, 
please God, have other enjoyments from your success. 
Railway shares will rise, your books will sell, and you will 
acquire influence and power; and then most certainly you 
will find something to use it in which will interest you and 
make you exert yourself. 

IV 

Wellington, N". Z. 
Dear Charlotte,— I began a letter to you one bitter 
cold evening last week, but it turned out such a sad one 
* Anne Bronte. 



^66 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

that I have left it and begun again. I am sitting all alone 
in my own house, or rather what is to be mine when I've 
paid for it. I bought it of Henry when Ellen' died — 
shop and all, and carry it on by myself. I have made up my 
mind not to get any assistance. I have not too much work, 
and the annoyance of having an unsuitable companion was 
too great to put up with without necessity. I find now 
that it was Ellen that made me so busy, and without her 
to nurse I have plenty of time. I have begun to keep the 
house very tidy; it makes it less desolate. I take great 
interest in my trade — as much as I could do in anything 
that was not all pleasure. But the best part of my life is 
the excitement of arrivals from England. Reading all the 
news, written and printed, is like living another life quite 
separate from this one. The old letters are strange — very, 
when I begin to read them, but quite familiar notwith- 
standing. So are all the books and newspapers, though I 
never see a human being to whom it would ever occur to 
me to mention anything I read in them. I see your nom 
de guerre in them sometimes. I saw a criticism on the 
preface to the second edition of Wuthering Heights. I 
saw it among the notables who attended Thackeray's lec- 
tures. I have seen it somehow connected with Sir J. K. 
Shuttleworth. Did he want to marry you, or only to 
lionise you ? or was it somebody else ? 

Your life in London is a " new country " to me, which 
I cannot even picture to myself. You seem to like it — at 
least some things in it, and yet your late letters to Mrs. J. 
Taylor talk of low spirits and illness. " What's the matter 
with you now? " as my mother used to say, as if it were the 
twentieth time in a fortnight. It is really melancholy that 
now, in the prime of life, in the flush of your hard-earned 

'Ellen Taylor, cousin to Mary Taylor, who had joined her in 
the enterprise of keeping shop and had recently died. 



THOMAS CARLYLE 267 

prosperity, you can't be well. Did not Miss Martineau 
improve you? If she did, why not try her and her plan 
again ? But I suppose if you had hope and energy to try, 
you would be well. Well, it's nearly dark and you will 
surely be well when you read this, so what's the use of 
writing? I should like well to have some details of your 
life, but how can I hope for it? I have often tried to give 
you a picture of mine, but I have not the skill. I get a 
heap of details, mostly paltry in themselves, and not 
enough to give you an idea of the whole. Oh, for one 
hour's talk ! You are getting too far off and beginning to 
look strange to me. Do you look as you used to do, I 
wonder ? WHiat do you and Ellen Nussey talk about when 
you meet ? There ! it's dark. 

Invitation to Join in the Founding of the Misan- 
thropic Society 

Thomas Carlyle ' to Thomas De Quincey 

Craigenputtoch, 11th Decemh&r, 1828. 
My Dear Sir, 

Having the opportunity of a frank, I cannot resist the 
temptation to send you a few lines, were it only to signify 
that two well-wishers of yours are still alive in these remote 
moors, and often thinking of you with the old friendly 
feelings. My wife encourages me in this innocent pur- 
pose: she has learned lately that you were inquiring for 
her of some female friend ; nay, even promising to visit us 
here — a fact of the most interesting sort to both of us. I 
am to say, therefore, that your presence at this fireside will 
diffuse no ordinary gladness over all members of the house- 

^ James Smetham, in one of his letters, speaks finely of Car- 
lyle as, "The great Gothic whale lumbering and floundering in 
the Northern Seas, and spouting his ' foam fountains ' under the 
crackling Aurora and the piercing Hyperborean stars." 



268 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

hold; that our warmest welcome, and such solacements, 
as even the desert does not refuse, are at any time, and at 
all times in store for one we love so well. Neither is this 
expedition so impracticable. We lie but a short way out of 
your direct route to Westmoreland; communicate by 
gravelled roads with Dumfries and other places in the 
habitable globe. Were you to warn us of your approach, 
it might all be made easy enough. And then such a treat 
it would be to hear the sound of philosophy and literature 
in the hitherto quite savage wolds, where since the creation 
of the world no such music, scarcely even articulate speech, 
had been uttered or dreamed of! Come, therefore, come 
and see us ; for we often long after you. Nay, I can prom- 
ise too, that we are almost a unique sight in the British 
Empire ; such a quantity of German periodicals and mystic 
speculation embosomed in plain Scottish Peat-moor being 
nowhere else that I know of to be met with. 

In idle hours we sometimes project founding a sort of 
colony here, to be called the ^^Misanthropic Society," the 
settlers all to be men of a certain philosophic depth, and 
intensely sensible of the present state of literature; each 
to have his own cottage, encircled with roses or thistles 
as he might prefer; a library and pantry within, and huge 
stack of turf -fuel without; fenced off from his neigh- 
bours by fir woods, and, when he pleased, by cast-metal 
railings, so that each might feel himself strictly as an 
individual, and free as a son of the wilderness; but the 
whole settlement to meet weekly over coffee, and there 
unite in their Miserere, or what were better, hurl forth their 
defiance, pity, expostulation, over the whole universe, civil, 
literary, and religious. I reckon this place a much fitter 
site for such an establishment than your Lake Country — 
a region abounding in natural beauty, but blown on by 
coach-horns, betrodden by picturesque tourists, and other- 



THOMAS CARLYLE 269 

wise exceedingly desecrated by too frequent resort; whereas 
here, though still in communication with the manufactur- 
ing world, we have a solitude altogether Druidical — grim 
hills tenanted chiefly by the wild grouse, tarns and brooks 
that have soaked and slumbered unmolested since the 
Deluge of Noah, and nothing to disturb you with speech, 
except Arcturus and Orion, and the Spirit of Nature, in 
the heaven and in the earth, as it manifests itself in anger 
or love, and utters its inexplicable tidings, unheard by 
mortal ear. Would you come hither and be king over us; 
then indeed we had made a fair beginning, and the " Bog 
School " might snap its fingers at the " Lake School " 
itself, and hope to be one day recognised of all men. 

But enough of this fooling. Better were it to tell you 
in plain prose what little can be said of my own welfare, 
and inquire in the same dialect after yours. It will gratify 
you to learn that here, in the desert, as in the crowded city, 
I am moderately active and well; better in health, not 
worse; and though active only on the small scale, yet in 
my own opinion honestly, and to as much result as has been 
usual with me at any time. We have horses to ride on, 
gardens to cultivate, tight walls and strong fires to defend 
us against winter ; books to read, paper to scribble on ; and 
no man or thing, at least in this visible earth, to make us 
afraid; for I reckon that so securely sequestered are we, 
not only would no Catholic Eebellion, but even no new 
Hengist and Horsa invasion, in an5rwise disturb our tran- 
quillity. True, we have no society; but who has, in the 
strict sense of that word? I have never had any worth 
speaking much about since I came into this world : in the 
next, it may be, they will order matters better. Meanwhile, 
if we have not the ivlieat in great quantity, we are nearly 
altogether free from the chaff, which often in this matter 
is highly annoying to weak nerves. My wife and I are 



270 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

busy learning Spanish; far advanced in Don Quixote al- 
ready. I purpose writing mystical Reviews for somewhat 
more than a twelvemonth to come ; have Greek to read, and 
the whole universe to study (for I understand less and less 
of it) ; so that here as well as elsewhere I find that a man 
may '' dree his weird " (serve out his earthly apprentice- 
ship) with reasonable composure, and wait what the flight 
of years may bring him, little disappointed (unless he is a 
fool) if it brings him mere nothing save what he has al- 
ready — a body and soul — niore cunning and costly treas- 
ures than all Golconda and Potosi could purchase for him. 
What would the vain worm, man, be at? Has he not a 
head, to speak of nothing else^ — a head (be it with a hat or 
without one) full of far richer things than Windsor Palace, 
or the Brighton Teapot added to it? What are all Dresden 
picture-galleries and magazines des arts et des metiers to 
the strange paintings and thrice wonderful and thrice pre- 
cious workmanship that goes on under the cranium of a 
beggar ? What can be added to him or taken from him by 
the hatred or love of all men? The grey paper or the 
white silk paper in which the gold ingot is wrapped; the 
gold is inalienable; he is the gold. But truce to this 
moralising. I had a thousand things to ask concerning 
you : your employments, purposes, sufferings, and pleasures. 
Will you not write to me ? Will you not come to me and 
tell? Believe it, you are well loved here, and none feels j 
better than I what a spirit is for the present eclipsed in. 
clouds. For the present it can only be; time and chancaj 
are for all men; that troublous season will end; and onej 
day with more joyful, not deeper truer regard, I shall see] 
you " yourself again." Meanwhile, pardon me this intru- 
sion ; and write, if you have a vacant hour which you would! 
fill with a good action. Mr. Jeffrey is still anxious to] 
know you; has he ever succeeded? We are not to be i] 



EDWARD FITZGERALD S71 

Edinburgh, I believe, till spring; but I will send him a 
letter to you (with your permission) by the first convey- 
ance. Remember me with best regards to Professor Wilson 
and Sir W. Hamilton, neither of whom must forget me; 
not omitting the honest Gordon, who I know will not. 

The bearer of this letter is Henry Inglis, a young gentle- 
man of no ordinary talent and worth, in whom, as I believe, 
es stecht gar viel. Should he call himself, pray let this 
be an introduction, for he reverences all spiritual worth, 
and you also will learn to love him. — With all friendly 
sentiments, I am ever, my dear Sir, most faithfully yours, 

T. Carlyle. 

Reading Compared to Sailing, and the French 
Revolution to a Rough Running Sea 

Edward FitzGerald to Bernard Barton ^ 

London, April, 1838. 
Dear Sir, 

John, who is going down into Suifolk, will I hope take 
this letter and despatch it to you properly. I write more 
on account of this opportunity than of anything I have to 
say : for I am very heavy indeed with a kind of Influenza, 
which has blocked up most of my senses, and put a wet 
blanket over my brains. This state of head has not been 
improved by trying to get through a new book much in 
fashion — Carlyle's French Revolution — written in a Ger- 
man style. An Englishman writes of French Revolutions 
in a German style. People say the book is very deep : but 
it appears to me that the meaning seems deep from lying 
under mystical language. There is no repose, nor equable 
movement in it : all cut up into short sentences half reflect- 

* The Quaker poet and friend of Charles Lamb, who lived at 
Woodbridge, whose daughter FitzGerald subsequently married. 



272 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

ive, half narrative; so that one labours through it as ves- 
sels do through what is called a short sea — small^ contrary- 
going waves caused by shallows, and straits, and meeting 
tides, etc.; I like to sail before the wind over the surface 
of an even-rolling eloquence, like that of Bacon or the 
Opium Eater. There is also pleasant fresh water sailing 
with such writers as Addison; is there any pond-sailing in 
literature? that is, drowsy, slow, and of small compass? 
Perhaps we may say, some Sermons. But this is only con- 
jecture. Certainly Jeremy Taylor rolls along as majes- 
tically as any of them. We have had Alfred Tennyson 
here ; very droll, and very wayward : and much sitting up 
of nights till two and three in the morning with pipes in 
our mouths: at which good honr we would get Alfred to 
give us some of his magic music, which he does between 
growling and smoking; and so to bed. All this has not 
cured my Influenza, as you may imagine : but these hours 
shall be remembered long after the Influenza is forgotten. 



Musical Biography and the Meaning of Music 

Edward FitzGerald to F. Tennyson 

31 March 1842. 
Dear Frederic, 

I don't understand your theory about trumpets, which 
have always been so little spiritual in use, that they have 
been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from 
the beginning of the world. ''Power/' whether spiritual 
or physical, is the meaning of the trumpet: and so, well 
used, as you say, by Handel in his approaches to the Deity. 
The fugue in the overture to the Messiah expresses perhaps 
the thorny wandering ways of the world before the voice 
of one in the wilderness, and before "Comfort ye my 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 273 

people, etc/' Mozart, I agree with you, is the most universal 
musical genius: Beethoven has been too analytical and 
erudite: but his inspiration is nevertheless true. I have 
Just read his Life by Moscheles : well worth reading. He 
shewed no very decided preference for music when a child, 
though he was the son of a composer : and I think that he 
was, strictly speaking, more of a thinker than a musician. 
A great genius he was somehow. He was very fond of 
reading: Plutarch and Shakespeare his great favourites. 
He tried to think in music: almost to reason in music: 
whereas perhaps we should be contented with feeling in it. 
It can never speak very definitely. There is that famous 
" Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, etc.," in Handel : noth- 
ing can sound more simple and devotional : but it is only 
adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love 
song in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses 
more than their God. Then the famous music of " He 
layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, etc.," was 
originally fitted to an Italian pastoral song — " Nasce al 
bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc." That part 
which seems so well to describe " and walketh on the wings 
of the wind " falls happily in with " e con Faura di f or- 
tuna " with which this pastorello sailed along. The char- 
acter of the music is ease and largeness : as the shepherd 
lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music 
breathes ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. 
Beethoven's Sonata — Op. 14 — is meant to express the dis- 
cord and gradual atonement of two lovers, or a man and 
his wife: and he was disgusted that everyone did not see 
what was meant : in truth it expresses any resistance grad- 
ually overcome — Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for 
instance. Music is so far the most universal language, 
that any one piece in a particular strain symbolizes all the 
analogous phenomena spiritual or material if you can 



274 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony 
describes the battle of the passions as well as of armed men. 
This is a long and muddy discourse : but the walls of Char- 
lotte Street present little else, especially during this last 
week of Lent, to twaddle about. 

A Good Fire, a Cat and a Dog on the Rug, and an 
Old Woman in the Kitchen 

Edward FitzGerald to F. Tennyson 

Boulge, Woodbridge, Dec. 8, '44. 
My Deae Frederic, 

What is a poor devil to do ? You tell me quite truly that 
my letters have not two ideas in them, and yet you tell me 
to write my two ideas as soon as I can. So indeed it is so 
far easy to write down one's two ideas, if they are not very 
abstruse ones ; but then what the devil encouragement is it 
to a poor fellow to expose his nakedness so ? All I can say 
is, to say again that if you lived in this place, you would 
not write so long a letter as you have done, full of capital 
description and all good things ; though without any com- 
pliment I am sure you would write a better letter than I 
shall. But you see the original fault in me is that I choose 
to be in such a place as this at all ; that argues a talent for 
dullness which no situation nor intercourse of men could 
much improve. It is true; I really do like to sit in this 
doleful place with a good fire, a cat and a dog on the rug, 
and an old woman in the kitchen. This is all my live 
stock. The house is yet damp as last year ; and the great 
event of this winter is my putting up a trough round the 
eaves to carry off the wet. There was discussion whether 
the trough should be of iron or zinc : iron dear and lasting : 
zinc the reverse. It was decided for iron : and accordingly 
iron is put up. 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 275 

Why should I not live in London and see the world? 
you say. Why then I say as before, I don't like it. I 
think the dullness of country people is better than the im- 
pudence of Londoners ; and the fresh cold and wet of our 
clay fields better than a fog that stinks per se; and this 
room of mine, clean at all events, better than a dirty room 
in Charlotte St. If you, Morton, and Alfred,' were more 
in London, I should be there more; but now there is but 
Spedding and Allen whom I care a straw about. I have 
written two notes to Alfred to ask him to notify his exist- 
ence to me ; but you know he is obstinate on that point. I 
heard from Carlyle that he (Alfred) had passed an evening 
at Chelsea much to C.'s delight ; who has opened the gates 
of his Valhalla to let Alfred in. Thackeray is at Malta, 
where I am told he means to winter. . . . 

As I have no people to tell you of, so have I very few 
books, and know nothing of what is stirring in the literary 
world. I have read the Life of Arnold of Rugby, who was 
a noble fellow; and the letters of Burke, which do not add 
to, or detract from, what I knew, and liked in him before. 
I am meditating to begin Thucydides one day; perhaps 
this winter. . . . 

Old Seneca, I have no doubt, was a great humbug in 
deed, and his books have plenty of it in word; but he had 
got together a vast deal of what was not humbug from 
others ; and, as far as I see, the old philosophers are avail- 
able now as much as two thousand years back. Perhaps 
you will think that is not saying much. Don't suppose I 
think it good philosophy in myself to keep here out of the 
world, and sport a gentle Epicurism; I do not; I only 
follow something of a natural inclination, and know not if 
I could do better under a more complex system. It is very 
smooth sailing hitherto down here. No velvet waistcoat 
^ Lord Tennyson. 



276 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

and ever-lustrous pumps to be considered ; no bon mots got 
up; no information necessary. There is a pipe for the 
parsons to smoke, and quite as much bon mots, literature, 
and philosophy, as they care for without any trouble at all. 
If we could but feed our poor ! It is now the 8th of Decem- 
ber; it has blown a most desperate East wind, all razors; 
a wind like one of those blades one sees at shops in London, 
with 365 blades all drawn and pointed; the wheat is 
sown; the fallows cannot be ploughed. What are all the 
poor folks to do during the winter? And they persist in 
having the same enormous families they used to do; a 
woman came to me two days ago who had seventeen chil- 
dren! What farmers are to employ all these? What 
Landlord can find room for them ? The law of Greneration 
must be repealed. The London press does nothing but rail 
at us poor country folks for our cruelty. I am glad they 
do so; for there is much to be set right. But I want to 
know if the Editor of the Times is more attentive to his 
devils, their wives and families, than our squires and 
squiresses and parsons are to their fellow parishioners. 
Punch also assumes a tone of virtuous satire, from the 
mouth of Mr. Douglas Jerrold! It is easy to sit in arm 
chairs at a club in Pall Mall and rail on the stupidity and 
brutality of those in High Suffolk. 

Come, I have got more than two ideas into this sheet; 
but I don't know if you won't dislike them worse than 
mere nothing. But I was determined to fill my letter. 
Yes, you are to know that I slept at Woodbridge last night, 
went to Church there this morning, where every one sat 
with a purple nose, and heard a dismal well-meant sermon ; 
and the organ blew us out with one grand idea at all events, 
one of old Handel's Coronation Anthems; that I dined 
early, also in Woodbridge ; and walked up here with a tre- 
mendous East wind blowing sleet in my face from over the 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 277 

German Sea, that I found your letter when I entered my 
room; and reading it through, determined to spin you off 
a sheet incontinently, and lo ! here it is ! ISTow or never ! I 
shall now have my tea in, and read over your letter again 
while at it. You are quite right in saying that Gravesend 
excursions with you do me good. When did I doubt it ? I 
remember them with great pleasure; few of my travels so 
much so. I like a short journey in good company; and I 
like you all the better for your Englishman's humours. 
One doesn't find such things in London; something more 
like it here in the country where every one, with whatever 
natural stock of intellect endowed, at least grows up his 
own way, and flings his branches about him, not stretched 
on the espalier of London dinner-table company. 
P. S. Next morning. Snow is on the ground. We have 
our wonders of inundation in Suffolk also, I can tell you. 
For three weeks ago such floods came, that an old woman 
was carried off as she was retiring from a beer house about 
9 p. m., and drowned. She was probably half seas over 
before she left the beer house. 

And three nights ago I looked out at about ten o'clock at 
night, before going to bed. It seemed perfectly still; 
frosty, and the stars shining bright. I heard a continuous 
moaning sound, which I knew to be, not that of an infant 
exposed, or female ravished, but the sea, more than ten 
miles off! What little wind there was carried to us the 
murmurs of the waves circulating round these coasts so far 
over a flat country. But people here think that this sound 
so heard is not the waves that break, but a kind of pro- 
phetic voice from the body of the sea itself, announcing 
great gales. Sure enough we have got them, however her- 
alded. Now I say that all this shows that we in this Suffolk 
are not so completely given over to prose and turnips as some 
would have us. I always said that being near the sea, and 



278 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

being able to catch a glimpse of it from the tops of hills, 
and of houses, redeemed Suffolk from dullness; and at all 
events our turnip fields, dull in themselves, were at least 
set all round with an undeniably poetic element. And so I 
see Arnold says; he enumerates five inland counties as the 
only parts of England for which nothing could be said in 
praise. Not that I agree with him there neither; I cannot 
allow the valley of the Ouse about which some of my pleas- 
antest recollections hang to be without its great charm. W. 
Browne, whom you despised, is married, and I shall see but 
little of him for the future. I have laid by my rod and 
line by the willows of the Ouse for ever. " He is married 
and cannot come." This change is the true meaning of 
those verses, 

"Friend after friend departs; 
Who has not lost a friend?" 

and so on. If I were conscious of being steadfast and good 
humoured enough, I would marry to-morrow. But a 
humourist is best by himself. 

NewYeae'sEve 

Edward FitzGerald to F. Tennyson 

[Boulge] Deer. 31, '50. 
My dear old Frederic, 

If you knew how glad I am to hear from you, you would 
write to me oftener. You see I make a quick return when- 
ever I get an epistle from you. I should indeed have 
begun to indite before, but I had not a scrap of serviceable 
paper in the house: and I am only this minute returned 
from a wet walk to Woodbridge bringing home the sheet 
on which I am now writing, along with the rest of a half- 
quire, which may be filled to you, if we both live. I now 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 279 

count the number of sheets : there are nine. I do not think 
we average more than three letters a year each. Shall both 
of us, or either, live three years more, beginning with the 
year that opens to-morrow? I somehow believe not: which 
I say not as a doleful thing (indeed you may look at it as 
a very ludicrous one). Well, we shall see. I am all for 
the short and merry life. Last night I began the sixth 
Book of Lucretius in bed. You laugh grimly again? I 
have not looked into it for more than a year, and I took 
it up by mistake for one of Swift's dirty volumes; and, 
having got into bed with it, did not care to get out to 
change it. . . . 

I have not seen any one you know since I last wrote ; nor 
heard from any one : except dear old Spedding, who really 
came down and spent two days with us, me and that 
Scholar ' and his Wife in their Village, in their delightful 
little house, in their pleasant fields by the Eiver side. Old 
Spedding was delicious there; always leaving a mark, I 
say, in all places one has been at with him, a sort of Pla- 
tonic perfume. For has he not all the beauty of the Pla- 
tonic Socrates, with some personal Beauty to boot? He 
explained to us one day about the laws of reflection in 
water : and I said then one never could look at the willow 
whose branches furnished the text without thinking of him. 
How beastly this reads ! As if he gave us a lecture ! But 
you know the man, how quietly it all came out; only be- 
cause I petulantly denied his plain assertion. For I really 
often cross him only to draw him out; and vain as I may 
be, he is one of those that I' am well content to make shine 
at my own expense. 

Don't suppose that this or any other ideal day with him 
effaces my days with you. Indeed, my dear Frederic, you 

^ The Rev. George Crabbe, son- of the poet, and Vicar of 
Bredfield. 



280 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

also mark many times and many places in which I have 
been with you. Gravesend and its avrfpi^jxoi shrimps 
cannot be forgotten. You say I shall never go to see you at 
Florence. I have said to you before and I now repeat it, 
that if ever I go abroad it shall be to see you and my God- 
child. I really cannot say if I should not have gone this 
winter (as I hinted in my last) in case you had answered 
my letter. But I really did not know if you had not left 
Florence; and a fortnight ago I thought to myself I would 
write to Horatio at Cheltenham and ask him for news of 
you. As to Alfred, I have heard of his marriage, etc., from 
Spedding, who also saw and was much pleased with her 
indeed. But you know Alfred himself never writes, nor 
indeed cares a halfpenny about one, though he is very well 
satisfied to see one when one falls in his way. You will 
think I have a spite against him for some neglect, when I 
say this, and say besides that I cannot care for his In 
Memoriam. ISTot so, if I know myself: I always thought 
the same of him, and was Just as well satisfied with it as 
now. His poem I never did greatly affect : nor can I learn 
to do so: it is full of finest things, but it is monotonous, 
and has the air of being evolved by a Poetical Machine 
of the highest order. So it seems to be with him now, at 
least to me, the Impetus, the lyrical oestrus, is gone. . . . 
It is the cursed inactivity (very pleasant to me who am no 
Hero) of this 19th century which has spoiled Alfred, I 
mean spoiled him for the great work he ought now to be 
entering upon; the lovely and noble things he has done 
must remain. It is dangerous work this prophesying about 
great Men. 

I hear little music but what I make myself or help to 
make with the Parson's son and daughter. We, with not 
a voice among us, go through Handel's Coronation An- 



EDWARD FITZGERALD 281 

tliems! Laughable it may seem; yet it is not quite so; 
the things are so well-defined, simple, and grand, that the 
faintest outline of them tells; my admiration of the old 
Giant grows and grows : his is the Music for a Great, Active 
People. Sometimes too, I go over to a place elegantly 
called Bungay, where a Printer lives who drills the young 
folks of a manufactory there to sing in Chorus once a 
week. . . . They sing some of the English Madrigals, 
some of Purcell, and some of Handel, in a way to satisfy 
me, who don't want perfection, and who believe that the 
grandest things do not depend on delicate finish. If you 
were here now, we would go over and hear the Harmonious 
Blacksmith sung in Chorus, with words, of course. It al- 
most made me cry when I heard the divine Air rolled into 
vocal harmony from the four corners of a large Hall. One 
can scarce comprehend the Beauty of the English Madri- 
gals till one hears them done (though coarsely) in this way 
and on a large scale : the play of the parts as they alternate 
from the different quarters of the room. 

I have taken another half sheet to finish my letter upon : 
so my calculation of how far this half-quire is to spread 
over Time is defeated. Let us write oftener, and longer, 
and we shall not tempt the Fates by inchoating too long a 
hope of letter-paper. I have written enough for one night ; 
I am now going to sit down and play one of Handel's Over- 
tures as well as I can — Semele, perhaps, a very grand one 
— then, lighting my lantern, trudge through the mud to 
Parson Crabbe's. Before I take my pen again to finish 
this letter the New Year will have dawned — on some of 
us. '^ Thou fool ! this night thy soul may be required of 
thee " ! Very well : while it is in this Body I will wish my 
dear old F. T. a happy N'ew Year. And now to drum out 
the Old with Handel. Good Night. 

New Year's Day 1851. A happy new Year to you! I 



282 FAMILIAR LETTERS 

sat up with my Parson till the Old Year was past, drink- 
ing punch and smoking cigars, for which I endure some 
headache this morning. Not that we took much; but a 
very little punch disagrees with me. Only I would not 
disappoint my old friend's convivial expectations. He is 
one of those happy men who has the boy's heart throbbing 
and trembling under the snows of sixty-five. 



X 

Oddities 



Calculating how much he has eaten and drunk. 

Sydney Smith (1711-m5) 

Unflattering remarks about Australia. 

Charles Lamh (1775-1835) 

1^<K real life tragedy. 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 

i^-^erein a certain gentleman dies of a most unnatural disease. 

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 

, .^^feosweH brought back to life. 

" Charles Dickens (1812-1870) 



Calculating How Much He Has Eaten and Drunk 

Sydney Smith to Lord Murray 

Combe Florey, September 29, 1843. 
You are, I hear, attending more to diet than heretofore. 
If you wish for anything like happiness in the fifth act of 
life, eat and drink about one half what you could eat and 
drink. Did I ever tell you my calculation about eating and 
drinking ? Having ascertained the weight of what I could 
live upon, so as to preserve health and strength, and what I 
did live upon, I found that, between ten and seventy years 
of age, I had eaten and drunk forty-four horse wagon loads 
of meat and drink more than would have preserved me in 
life and health ! The value of this mass of nourishment I 
considered to be worth seven thousand pounds sterling. It 
occurred to me that I must, by my voracity, have starved 
to death fully a hundred persons. This is a frightful cal- 
culation, but irresistibly true; and I think, dear Murray, 
your wagons require an additional horse each ! 

Unflattering Remarks about Australia 

Charles Lamb to Barron Field 

August 31, 1817. 
My dear Barron, — The bearer of this letter so far 
across the seas is Mr. Lawrey, who comes out to you as a 
missionary, and whom I have been strongly importuned to 
recommend to you as a most worthy creature by Mr. Fen- 
wick, a very old, honest friend of mine, of whom, if my 

285 



286 ODDITIES 

memory does not deceive me, you have had some knowledge 
heretofore as editor of the Statesman — a man of talent, and 
patriotic. If you can show him any facilities in his 
arduous undertaking, you will oblige us much. Well, and 
how does the land of thieves use you ? and how do you pass 
your time in your extra-judicial intervals? Going about 
the streets with a lantern, like Diogenes, looking for an 
honest man? You may look long enough, I fancy. Do 
give me some notion of the manners of the inhabitants 
where you are. They don't thieve all day long, do they? 
No human property could stand such continuous battery. 
And what do they do when they an't stealing? 

Have you got a theatre? What pieces are performed? 
Shakespear's, I suppose — not so much for the poetry, as 
for his having once been in danger of leaving his country 
on account of certain " small deer." 

Have you poets among you? Cursed plagiarists, I 
fancy, if you have any. I would not trust an idea or a 
pocket-hankerchief of mine among 'em. You are almost 
competent to answer Lord Bacon's problem, whether a 
nation of atheists can subsist together. You are practically 
in one: — 

" So thievish 'tis, that the eighth commandment itself 
Scarce seemeth there to be." 



A Real Life Tragedy 

Charles Dickens to MacUse 

Friday evening, March 12th, 1841. 

You will be greatly shocked and grieved to hear that the 

Raven is no more. He expired to-day at a few minutes 

after twelve o'clock at noon. He had been ailing for a few 

days, but we anticipated no serious result, conjecturing 



CHARLES DICKENS 287 

that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer 
might be lingering about his vitals without having any 
serious effect upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon 
he was taken so much worse that I sent an express for the 
medical gentleman (Mr. Herring) who promptly attended 
and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under the 
influence of this medicine he recovered so fast as to be able 
at eight o'clock p. m. to bite Topping. His night was 
peaceful. This morning at daybreak he appeared better; 
received (agreeably to the doctor's directions) another dose 
of castor oil; and partook plentifully of some warm gruel, 
the flavour of which he appeared to relish. Towards eleven 
o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary 
to muffle the stable knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, 
he was heard talking to himself about the horse and Top- 
ping's family, and to add some incoherent expressions 
which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his 
approaching dissolution, or some wishes relative to the dis- 
posal of his little property : consisting chiefly of half-pence 
which he had buried in different parts of the garden. On 
the clock striking twelve he appeared slightly agitated, but 
he soon recovered, walking twice or thrice along the coach- 
house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed ''Halloa, old 
girl!'' (his favourite expression), and died. 

He behaved throughout with decent fortitude, equanim- 
ity, and self-possession, which cannot be too much admired. 
I deeply regret that being in ignorance of his danger I did 
not attend to receive his last instructions. Something re- 
markable about his eyes occasioned Topping to run for the 
doctor at twelve. When they returned together our friend 
was gone. It was the medical gentleman who informed me 
of his decease. He did it with great caution and delicacy, 
preparing me by the remark that " a jolly queer start had 
taken place ; " but the shock was very great notwithstand- 



288 ODDITIES 

ing. I am not wholly free from suspicion of poison. A 
malicious butcher has been heard to say that he would 
" do " for him : his plea was that he would not be molested 
in taking orders down the mews by any bird that wore a 
tail. Other persons have also been heard to threaten: 
among others, Charles Knight, who has just started a 
weekly publication price f ourpence : Barnaby being, as you 
know, threepence. I have directed a post-mortem exam- 
ination, and the body has been removed to Mr. Herring's 
school of anatomy for that purpose. 

I could wish, if you can take the trouble, that you could 
inclose this to Forster, immediately after you have read it. 
I cannot discharge the painful task of communication more 
than once. Were they ravens who took manna to somebody 
in the wilderness? At times I hope they were, and at 
others I fear they were not, or they would certainly have 
stolen it by the way. In profound sorrow, I am ever your 
bereaved friend C. D. Kate is as well as can be expected, 
but terribly low as you may suppose. The children seem 
rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was play. 

Wherein a Certain Gentleman Dies of a Most Un- 
natural Disease 

Charles Dickens to Mr. Felton 

Broadstairs, Kent, September 1, 1843. 
My dear Felton^ — If I thought it in the nature of 
things that you and I could ever agree on paper, touching 
a certain Chuzzlewitian question whereupon Forster tells 
me you have remarks to make, I should immediately walk 
into the same, tooth an3^ nail. But as I don't, I won't. 
Contenting myself with the prediction, that one of these 
years and days, you will write or say to me : " My dear 
Dickens, you were right, though rough, and did a world of 



CHARLES DICKENS 289 

good, though you got most thoroughly hated for it." To 
which I shall reply : " My dear Felton, I looked a long 
way off and not immediately under my nose/' . . . 
At which sentiment you will laugh, and I shall laugh ; and 
then (for I foresee this will all happen in my land) we 
shall call for another pot of porter and two or three dozens 
of oysters. 

Now, don't you in your own heart and soul quarrel with 
me for this long silence ? 

Not half so much as I quarrel with myself, I know; 
but if you could read half the letters I write to you in 
imagination, you would swear by me for the best of corre- 
spondents. The truth is, that when I have done my morn- 
ing's work, down goes my pen, and from that minute I feel 
it a positive impossibility to take it up again, until imagi- 
nary butchers and bakers wave me to my desk. I walk 
about brimful of letters, facetious descriptions, touching 
morsels, and pathetic friendships, but can't for the soul of 
me uncork myself. The post-office is my rock ahead. My 
average number of letters that must be written every day 
is, at the least, a dozen. And you could no more know 
what I was writing to you spiritually, from the perusal of 
the bodily thirteenth, than you could tell from my hat 
what was going on in my head, or could hear my heart on 
the surface of my flannel waistcoat. 

This is a little fishing place; intensely quiet; built on a 
cliff, whereon — in the centre of a tiny semi-circular bay — 
our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the 
windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you've 
heard of the Goodwin Sands?) whence floating lights per- 
petually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on 
intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big lighthouse 
called the North Foreland on a hill behind the village, a 
severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy 



290 ODDITIES 

floaters, and stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the 
cliff are rare good sands, where all the children assemble 
every morning and throw up impossible fortifications, 
which the sea throws down again at high water. Old gen- 
tlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner 
in two reading-rooms and on a great many scattered seats 
in the open air. 

Other old gentlemen look all day through telescopes and 
never see anything. In a bay-window in a one-pair sits, 
from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair 
and no neck-cloth, who writes and grins as if he thought 
he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz. At one he 
disappears, and presently emerges from a bathing-machine, 
and may be seen — a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise — 
splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be seen 
in another bay-window on the ground floor, eating a strong 
lunch; after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on 
his back in the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him 
unless they know he is disposed to be talked to ; and I am 
told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a 
berry, and they do say is a small fortune to the innkeeper 
who sells beer and cold punch. But this is mere rumour. 
Sometimes he goes up to London (eighty miles, or so, 
away), and then I'm told there is a sound in Lincoln's 
Inn Fields at night, as men laughing, together with a 
clinking of knives and forks and wine glasses. . . . 

I often dream that I am in America again ; but, strange 
to say, I never dream of you. I am always endeavouring to 
get home in disguise, and have a dreary sense of distance. 
A propos of dreams, is it not a strange thing if writers of 
fiction never dream of their own creations; recollecting, 
I suppose, even in their dreams, that they have no real 
existence? I never dream of any of my own characters, 
and I feel it so impossible that I would wager Scott never 



CHARLES DICKENS 291 

did of his, real as they are. I had a good piece of absurdity 
in my head a night or two ago. I dreamed that somebody- 
was dead. I don't know who, but it's not to the purpose. 
It was a private gentleman, or a particular friend; and 
I was greatly overcome when the news was broken to me 
(very delicately) by a gentleman in a cocked hat, top boots, 
and a sheet. Nothing else. " Good God ! " I said, " is he 
dead ? " " He is as dead, sir," rejoined the gentleman, " as 
a door-nail. But we must all die, Mr. Dickens, sooner or 
later, my dear sir,'^ " Ah ! " I said, " Yes, to be sure. 
Very true. But what did he die of ? " The gentleman 
burst into a flood of tears, and said in a voice broken by 
emotion : " He christened his youngest child. Sir, with a 
toasting fork." I never in my life was so affected as at his 
having fallen a victim to this complaint. It carried a 
conviction to my mind that he never could have recovered. 
I knew that it was the most interesting and fatal malady 
in the world ; and I wrung the gentleman's hand in a con- 
vulsion of respectful admiration, for I felt that this 
explanation did equal honour to his head and heart. 



BoswELi. Brought Back to Life 

Charles Dickens to WilJcie Collins 

Lord Warden Hotel, Dover, 
Friday Evening, May 24, 1861. 
My dear Wilkie^ — I am delighted to receive so good an 
account of last night, and have no doubt that it was a 
thorough success. Now it is over, I may honestly say that I 
am glad you were (by your friendship) forced into the 
Innings, for there is no doubt that it is of immense impor- 
tance to a public man in our way to have his wits at his 
tongue's end. Sir (as Dr. Johnson would have said), if 



292 ODDITIES 

it be not irrational in a man to count his feathered bipeds 
before they are hatched, we will conjointly astonish them 
next year. Boswell : Sir, I hardly understand you. Jolin- 
son: Sir, you never understand anything. Boswell (in a 
sprightly manner) : Perhaps, Sir, I am all the better for 
it. Johnson (savagely) : Sir, I do not know but that you 
are. There is Lord Carlisle (smiling) ; he never under- 
stands anything, and yet the dog's well enough. Then, 
Sir, there is Forster ; he understands many things, and yet i 
the fellow is fretful. Again, Sir, there is Dickens, with a 
facile way with him — like Davy, Sir, like Davy — yet I am 
told that the man is lying at a hedge ale-house by the sea- . 
shore in Kent, as long as they will trust him. Boswell \ 
But there are no hedges by the sea in Kent, Sir. Johnson : 
And why not. Sir? Boswell (at a loss) : I don't know 
Sir, unless — Johnson (thundering) : Let us have no un- 
lesses. Sir. If your father had never said ^^ unless,'' he 
would never have begotten you, Sir. Boswell (yielding) : 
Sir, that is very true. 



INDEX 



Addison's essays are in reality 
extended letters, 12 

"Adonais," The first copy of 
the, 72 

Agonising over Cromwell's Let- 
ters, 160 

Arguments against swearing, 
249 

Artist and His Art, The, 137- 
167 

Ascending Vesuvius, 98 

Asceticism, Thackeray revolts 
against, 191 

Austen (Jane), Chinese fidel- 
ity and miniature delicacy 
of, 197 

Australia, Unflattering re- 
marks about, 285 

Author's contempt for contem- 
porary authors, An, 142 



Babylon, A prophet enters, 120 

Beaumont (Master Francis) to 
Ben Jonson, 223 

Blake (Wm.), letter to 
Thomas Butts, 144-147; he 
believes in himself, 144 

Borrow (Mr. and Mrs.), let- 
ter to John Murray, 133 

Boswell's "Life of Johnson," 
171; Bos well brought back 
to life, 291 

Boswelliana, 253 

Bronte (Charlotte), letter to 
Ellen Nussey, 78-84; to W. 
S. Williams, 193-198; dis- 
covering the Bronte litera- 
ture, 208 

Burns (Robert) to Davie, a 
brother-poet, 231 



By-gone Lovers, 25-86 

Byron (Lord), letter to Lady 
Byron, 37; to John Murray, 
151; a lady's opinion of, 
180; Byron beyond Words- 
worth, and Keats beyond 
them all, 181 



Calculating how much he 

(Sydney Smith) has eaten 

and drunk, 285 
Carlyle (Thomas), his letters 

are his true memoir, 19; 

letter to Dr. Carlyle, 120; 

to Margaret Carlyle, 103- 

107; to John Sterling, 160; 

to Thos. De Quincey, 267 

(Jane Welsh), letter to 

Thomas Carlyle, 74-77 

" Christmas Carol, The," Con- 
gratulating Dickens on, 178 

invitation, A reply to a, 

225 

Cities, The Love of, 109-123 

Classics, The, a solace for grief 
to Macaulay, 183 

Coliseum, The, 95 

Concerning the scandalous 
critiques of " Endymion " in 
Blackwood and the Quarterly 
Review, 128 

Confident of his (Words- 
worth's) future fame, 152 

Congratulating Dickens on 
"The Christmas Carol," 178 

Content to watch the Galley of 
Fame go by. He (Smetham) 
is, 163 

Courtship, An old-world, 27 

Co\AT)er (Wm.), letter to the 
Rev. John Newton, 229 



293 



294 



INDEX 



Criticising the Critics, 125-135 
Crome- Crome-Crome ! blows the 

solemn wind of Fame, eerier 

than ever, 215 
Cromwell's letters. Agonising 

over, 160 
Curious place, A, 93 



Deceived in her birthday let- 
ter — Jane Welsh Carlyle to 
Thomas Carlyle, 75 

Defending her (George Eliot's) 
union with G. H. Lewes, 84 

De Quineey (Thos. ), letter to 
a young man on adopting 
literature as a career, 176 

Dickens (Chas.), his letters 
full of pictures of life, 14; 
letter to John Forster, 102; 
to Maclise, 286; to Mr. Fel- 
ton, 288; to Wilkie Collins, 
291 

Distant land, From a, 260 

Dome beyond dome, palaces 
and colonnades, 100 

Drummer-boy, Parable of the, 
130 

Dutch landscape with figures 
in the foreground, 89 



E 



Elia prefers Fleet Street to 
Skiddaw, 113; paints for a 
Quaker friend the joys of 
living by literature, 149 

Eliot (George), letter to Mrs. 
Bray, 84-86; defending her 
union with Geo. Henry 
Lewes, 84 

Enchanted, 237 

" Endymion," Concerning the 
scandalous critiques of, in 
Blackwood and the Quarterly 
Review, 128 

England's greatest lyric poet 
(Keats) explains his art, 156 

English letter-writing, Art and 
attainment of, 9 



Epistolary writing not the 
fugitive and superseded art 
which many critics would 
have us suppose, 17 

Exile, In, 115 



" Faery Queen," The general 
intention of The, 139 

Familiar Letters, 247-282 

Fishing in Wales, An invita- 
tion to come, 241 

FitzGerald (E.), his letters 
preeminently those of friend- 
ship, 20; they soothe and re- 
lease the spirit in bondage to 
the world, 21 ; he buys a 'Con- 
stable,' 107 ; letter to F. Ten- 
nyson, 107; to E. B. Cowell, 
161, 199, 200; not pleased 
with "The Idylls of the 
King," 200; letter to John 
Allen, 198; to W. F. Pol- 
lock, 201; to C. E. Norton, 
202, 206; to Mrs. Kemble, 
205; to F. Tennyson, 212, 
272, 274, 278; to Bernard 
Barton, 271 

Future fame, Wordsworth is 
confident of his, 152 

G 

German culture. The fault of 
all, and the weakness of all 
German genius, 217 

Goldsmith (Oliver) to his 
Uncle Contarine, 89-93; let- 
ter to Mrs. Bunbury, 225 

Good fire. A, a cat and a dog 
on the rug, and an old 
woman in the kitchen, 274 

"Good God, my dear fellow, 
have we lived to see this?" 
102 

Gossip, The world loves, — the 
staple of all good conversa- 
tion, 11 

Grand heroic spirit. The, — that 
trumpet-stop on his organ, 
190 



INDEX 



295 



H 

Handel's gods are like Ho- 
mer's, and his sublime never 
reaches beyond the region of 
the clouds, 213 

Haslam (Wm.), letter to 
Joseph Severn, 59 

Hatred of mawkish popularity. 
His (John Keats'), 127 

Haydon (B. R.), letter to Miss 
Mitford, 181 

"Heart ay's the part ay, that 
makes us right or wrang," 
The, 231 

How Athens taught her his- 
torians to write, 161 

Scott came to write " The 

Lay of the Last Minstrel," 
147 

Howell (James), letter to 
Cap't Thomas B., 249 

Humanite, Pauvre et triste, 
205 

Hunt (Leigh), letter to Joseph 
Severn, 70 



In exile, 115 



Jeffrey (Lord Francis), letter 
to Charles Dickens, 178 

K 

Keats (John), rough drafts 
of his letters have the bril- 
liant effervescence of genius, 
14; the best representative 
of inspired letter-writing, 
18; in defence of him, 131; 
letter to Fanny Brawne, 39- 
51; to Chas. Armitage 
Brown, 51-57; to J. H.Reyn- 
olds, 127; to J, Augustus 
Hessey, 128; to John Tay- 
lor, 130, 150; to J. Hamilton 
Reynolds, 174, 237 

Kingsley (Chas.), letter to 
Thomas Hughes, 241 



Lady's opinion of Lord Byron, 

A, 180 
Lamb (Chas.), his letters have 

the inimitable charm found 

in the "Essays of Elia," 20; 

letter to Manning, 113; to 

Wordsworth, 115-120; to 

Bernard Barton, 149 
Landscapes, 87-108 
Lanier (Sidney), letter to his 

wife, 217 
Lavengro and his wife, being 

aroused, proclaim war, 133 
"Lay of the Last Minstrel," 

How Scott came to write the, 

147 
Learning to love, 78 
Letter, To write a good, one 

must possess the intimate 

note, 9 

which was never sent, A: 

Lord Byron to Lady By- 
ron, 37 

which came too late. The, 

70 

writer. Genuine, not dis- 
turbed by the loud poten- 
tialities of publicity, 10; 
must be capable of the spirit 
of detachment and divesti- 
ture, 10 

-writing, English, Art 

and attainment of, 9-23 

Lever (Chas.), letter to John 
Blackwood, 190 

Lincoln (Abraham), his ex- 
quisite letter to Mrs. Bixby, 
16, 17 ^ 

Literary Verdicts, 169-209 

prejudices, with an anec- 
dote about " Daddy " Words- 
worth, 202 

Living by literature, Elia 
paints for a Quaker friend 
the joys of, 149 

" London never was so enter- 
taining since it had a steeple 
or a madhouse," 111 

Love of a poet, The (Keats to 



H 



296 



INDEX 



Fanny Brawne), 39; its se- 
quel, 61; the Aftermath, 70 

of Cities, The, 109-123 

Luther's country, In, 103 

M 

Mawkish popularity, Keats' 
hatred of, 127 

Mazzini is beloved by a Jewish 
lady, 74 

"Mermaid, The," What things 
have we seen done at, 223 

Misanthropic Society, Invita- 
tion to join in the founding 
of the, 267 

Miscellaneous Verdicts, 211- 
219 

Mitford, Miss, letter to B. 
Robert Hay don, 180 

Montagu (Lady Mary) rec- 
ognised in the letter a form 
of literary expression which 
suited her rapid and way- 
ward pen, 12; her gaudy 
slovenliness and eccentric 
dress, 13; element of spon- 
taneity sometimes wanting 
in her letters, 14; letter to 
her husband-to-be, 27 

Musical biography and the 
meaning of music, 272 

Mc 

Macaulay (Lord), letters to T. 
Flower Ellis, 157, 183, 187, 
256-259; he returns to his 
classics and finds in them 
solace for grief, 183; letter 
to Hannah and Margaret 
Macaulay, 253 

N 
New Year's Eve, 278 



Oddities, 283-292 
Olney, The news at, 229 



Painter, A, What it means to 
be, 162 

Parable of the Drummer-boy, 
The, 130 

Parliament House, Winter fore- 
noons in the, 244 

Personal note, The, missing in 
Kingsley, but present in 
Mrs. Carlyle, 11 

Pleasing transport. The, 27 

Pleasures of literature and 
statecraft compared, 157 

Plato is re-discovered and a 
German professor is con- 
demned, Wherein, 187 

Poets, The, arranging them in 
the order of their morality, 
198 

Pope (Alex.) in his epistles did 
much to re-establish the let- 
ter in popular esteem, 12; 
letter to Lady Mary Mon- 
tagu, 33 

Prophet enters Babylon, A, 120 



R 



Rajahs, cranks, Virgil, liter- 
ary good advice, and an en- 
tirely new method of pre- 
venting men from i^wearing 
falsely, 256 

Reading compared to sailing, 
and the French Revolution 
to a rough-running sea, 271 

Real life tragedy. A, 286 

Rhymed Epistles, 221-246 

Rustic tragedy. A, 33 

S 

Scott (Sir Walter) resembles ; 
Homer in the simplicity of f 
his story, and Jane Austen i 
never goes out of the par- ■ 
lour, 201 ; letter to Miss i 
Seward, 147 

Self-revelation, the first aim i 
of a true letter, 9; the man 



INDEX 



297 



who is not prepared to un- 
lock his heart can never 
write a great letter, 10 
Severn (Joseph), letter to 
Mrs. Brawne, 57, 67; to C. 
Armitage Brown, 67; to 
Wm. Haslam, 69 

Shelley (P. B.), letter to 
Joseph Severn, 72; to T. L. 
Peacock, 95-101; to the edi- 
tor of The Quarterly Review, 
131 

Smetham (Jas.), his letters, 
the record of his inner life, 
are in the first rank of intel- 
lectual letters which express 
thought, 22; they convey the 
impression of serenity, 22; 

letter to , 162, 163; to 

, 208 

Smith (Sydney), letter to 
Lord Macaulay, 285 

Sneering at the British public, 
151 

Sophocles a pure Greek temple, 
but ^schylus troubles men 
with his grandeur and his 
gloom, 199 

Southey (Robert), letter to 
Joseph Cottle, 93-95 

Spenser (Edmund), letter to 
Sir Walter Raleigh, 139 

Steele (Richard), to his Molly, 
27 

Sterne (Laurence), letter to 
"Lady P.," 35 

Stevenson (R. L.), his letters 
have the value which at- 
taches to a revelation of per- 
sonality, 15; in them are the 
essential artist, instructive, 
natural, triumphantly flexi- 
ble, and at ease, 16; the con- 
versational character of his 
letters, 21; letter to Edmund 
Gosse, 165; to Charles Bax- 
ter, 244 

Swearing, Arguments against, 
249 

falsely. New method of 

preventing men from, 256 



Swift (Dean), letter to Alex- 
ander Pope, 141 



Taylor (Mary), letter to Char- 
lotte Bronte, 260-267 

Thackeray (W. M.) revolts 
against Asceticism, 191; let- 
ter to Mr. and Mrs. Brook- 
field, 191 

U 

Unflattering remarks about 

Australia, 285 
Unnatural disease, A most, 

whereof a certain gentleman 

dies, 288 
Uttering his heart about the 

public, R. L. Stevenson, 165 



V 



Verdict upon the literature of 
his own age (De Quincey's), 
A, 176 
Verdicts, Literary, 169-209 

, Miscellaneous, 211-219 

Vesuvius, Ascending, 98 
Vex the world. The chief end 
I (Dean Swift) propose to 
myself in all my labours is 
to, 141 

W 

Walpole (Horace) conscious of 
the " irritation of the idea," 
12; the most brilliant letter- 
writer of his time, 13; letter 
to Geo. Montagu, 111; to 

, 142; to Miss Berry, 

171 

" What a dishclout of a soul 
hast thou made of me !" 35 

it means to be a painter, 

162 

Wherein Plato is re-discovered 
and a German professor con- 
demned, 187 



298 INDEX 

Winter forenoons in the Par- impetuosity of mind, 73; as 

liament House, 244 compared with Milton, 174; 

Woman and her hero, A, 193 letter to Lady Beaumont, 

Wordsworth (Wm.) admires 152; to Sir Walter Scott, 

in Dry den his ardour and 173 



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